Ian McEwan is lucky to be allowed to publish novellas - Telegraph

The Booker-prize winning author Ian McEwan asserted at the weekend that the novella is a superior literary form to the novel. If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy," he said. Anyone who has read his work might have guessed he felt this way. He he started his career in 1975 with a blistering collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites and his first novel was the slender but disproportionately powerful. The Cement Garden which came in at a mere 144 pages - but it is interesting to hear him come out and say it. Not just because he is arguing against the general sense that a thumping great novel is more worthy of of prizes, of being paid for - than a slim volume, but because it is not absolutely clear what he means.