Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a novel by the British writer Ian McEwan, published in 1998. It won that year's Booker Prize, and it is a short book about two men who have known each other for a long time.

At the funeral of the photographer Molly Lane, three of her former lovers are present. Two of them are old friends: Vernon Halliday, a newspaper editor, and Clive Linley, who is Britain's most successful serious composer. The third is Julian Garmony, the Foreign Secretary, and neither of the friends can understand what Molly ever saw in him.

Molly died of a brain disease that left her helpless, and her death prompts Clive, who is single, to think about his own decline. He asks Vernon to end his life if he ever reaches a state he could not bear, and Vernon agrees on the condition that Clive will do the same for him. The novel follows what that agreement does to two men whose careers are already running into trouble, and the title names the place where the story arrives.