Ian McEwan announces new novel, Machines Like Me

Due out next spring and set in an alternate 1980s London, the book depicts a man and a woman drawn into a love triangle with a ‘synthetic human’

Ian McEwan’s next novel will see the Booker prize-winning author venture into science fiction, as he unpicks the moral dilemma created when a love triangle forms around a “synthetic human”.

Machines Like Me, set for publication next April, will be set in an alternative version of 1980s London, where Alan Turing has made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, Britain has lost the Falklands war and Margaret Thatcher is battling Tony Benn for power. The novel centres on Charlie, a man “drifting through life and dodging full-time employment”, who has fallen in love with Miranda, a student with a secret.

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