A Neuro-novel: Enduring Love (Ian McEwan)

The world has shifted towards a postmodern axis in parallel with the fact that neurology has reached important data in the last fifty years and the dark parts of the brain have been illuminated. In such a process, with the acceleration of the flow of information, it has been observed that science and literature (which is the way of self-expression and creation), which are two important fields of curiosity and search throughout the history of mankind, are side by side and intertwined. Thus, neurology (the functioning of the brain, its malfunctions), which has been the subject of literature many times before, has now started to be presented to the reader as the main theme in novels and neuro-novel is separated from other genres under such names as neuro-narrative, third culture novels, neuro-fiction, syndrome novels While Oliver Sacks describes A. R. Luria's preliminary studies on brain injuries in the 1970s as the earliest model for a "Neurological novel"; however, the origin story of the Neuro-novel became more distinct in 1997 and improved in the following periods. This study aims to analyze Ian McEwan's multi-layered novel Enduring Love, which is weaved around the theme of love and also blends scientific topics such as neuroscience, evolution and gene with a literary transfer. The theoretical framework used is the positive sciences. While doing so, the work is also analyzed through the lens of literary parameters.