Article: On a darkling planet: Ian McEwan's Saturday and the Condition of England.

Although Ian McEwan's recent best seller Saturday maintains throughout a conspicuous air of up-to-the-minute internationalism, that impression turns out to be somewhat misleading. In fact, in its broad outlines the book adheres to a long-familiar insular paradigm: the Condition of England novel. Like the encompassing novel genre itself, this subgenre resists strict definition. However, the preeminent Victorian exemplars, like Disraeli's Sybil (1845), Gaskell's North and South (1855), and Dickens's Hard Times (1854), share certain distinguishing features: they focus on landmark movements in the society of their time, such as rampant industrialization and urbanization, and their ...