Atonement, Ian McEwan's novel about class and love set in the Second World War, is to become an opera.

The novel has already been made into a movie starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

Now, the book's author and two of his friends have begun work on an adaptation that they hope will transfer the success of his 2001 bestseller and the Oscar-winning film to the stage.

McEwan said that he finally agreed to the project "several weeks ago".

While he will shape the overall adaptation, Craig Raine, the poet and critic, will write the words and Michael Berkeley, the composer who presents the Radio 3 show Private Passions, will write the music.

"It's not a chamber piece, that's for sure. You can do some very dramatic things with this. If you were thinking of a large-scale opera then what springs to mind is 380,000 troops on the beaches of Dunkirk. That would be quite a choir," the Telegraph quoted McEwan as telling the Times. (ANI)