The Chinese version of McEwan's My Purple Scented Novel Photo: Courtesy of Xu Yu

Ian McEwan speaks at The 21 University Students International Literature Gala in Beijing on Friday. Photos: Courtesy of Xu Yu

Well-known British novelist Ian McEwan was awarded The 21 University Students International Literature Award at a gala held at Renmin University of China in Beijing on Friday afternoon. 

The event, The 21 University Students International Literature Gala, is held every year by the university and internet giant Tencent. The award comes with a $10,000 prize.

"McEwan is good at depicting the complicated nature of humanity and the diversity of society. Continually capturing large social issues in stories involving families, partners and even individual emotions, McEwan contemplates the collision that takes place between individuals and society as a whole," Yang Huiyi, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said during the award ceremony.

Listed as one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945" by The Times and the 19th most powerful person in British culture by The Daily Telegraph, McEwan has earned himself an outstanding reputation through his works over the years.

In 1976, he won the Somerset Maugham Award for his first short story collection First Love, Last Rites, while his The Child in Time took the Whitbread Novel Award and the Prix Fémina Etranger in 1987 and 1993. Later in 1998, he was awarded the Man Booker Prize and took Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999.

Born in 1948, the 70-year-old writer published his first novel The Cement Garden in 1978. Since then, he has written more than 40 works covering novels, screenplays, short stories, plays, librettos, children's books as well as film adaptations.

"The novel can attempt to rehearse our future subjectivity, including the subjectivity of those whose minds we will invent. As we debate what kinds of moral systems we want to install in our creations, we will inevitably have to confront and define who and what we are, what we want," said McEwan at the ceremony while talking about the value of novels.

His novels Nutshell and My Purple Scented Novel, both published in 2016, were recently published in Chinese by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

According to McEwan, he is now working on a new novel Machines Like Me. Focusing on artificial intelligence, the book is expected to hit book stores in 2019.

"Will artificial humans dominate us, or even replace us?" McEwan asked at the event.

"These are questions that science fiction has been dealing with for many years. Now, at last, these questions need answering. The future has arrived. What kind of moral principles might we grant to a computer?"

"I really like what he said in his speech," many Chinese fans commented on Sina Weibo after McEwan's speech at the awards ceremony was published online.

"It was full of logic and reason," netizen Qunmu1840 noted on Sina Weibo.