The Daydreamer [Paperback]

A delightful literary foray for adults and children alike, from the inexhaustible imagination of Booker Prize-winning, best-selling author Ian McEwan. In these seven exquisitely interlinked episodes, the grown-up protagonist Peter Fortune reveals the secret journeys, metamorphoses, and adventures of his childhood. Living somewhere between dream and reality, Peter experiences fantastical transformations: he swaps bodies with the wise old family cat; exchanges existences with a cranky infant; encounters a very bad doll who has come to life and is out for revenge; and rummages through a kitchen drawer filled with useless objects to discover some not-so-useless cream that actually makes people vanish. Finally, he wakes up as an eleven-year-old inside a grown-up body and embarks on the truly fantastic adventure of falling in love. Moving, dreamlike, and extraordinary, The Daydreamer marks yet another imaginative departure for Ian McEwan.“Imaginative and sparkling, not a page should be missed.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

“As far-fetched and funny as anything by Roald Dahl.” —Vogue

“Combines wit and invention with a sense of the natural order being overturned.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Peter’s fantasy life is richer than anybody’s since Walter Mitty.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Brilliant . . . the quality of imagination at play here is something special.” —The Times Educational Supplement(London)Ian McEwan is the bestselling author of seventeen books, including the novels Nutshell; The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; On Chesil Beach; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award; The Comfl“)