Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan concerning the understanding and responding to the need for personal atonement. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, wartime England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives; her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake; and a reflection on the nature of writing. In 2007, the book was adapted into a BAFTA and Academy Award-nominated film of the same title, starring Saoirse Ronan, James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, and directed by Joe Wright.