- Atonement — Ian McEwan, 2001
A novel about the limits of apology: what it can and cannot undo, and the strange dignity of trying anyway. McEwan is unsentimental about the gap between what is owed and what is possible, and honest that some bridges are repaired in fiction because they cannot be repaired in life.
- A Separation — Asghar Farhadi, 2011
A film almost entirely composed of attempted apologies that arrive in the wrong register, at the wrong time, to the wrong person. It catches the small craft of repair: timing, tone, what is named and what is left, and how easily an apology can become another injury.
- Hurt — Johnny Cash, 2002
Cash takes Trent Reznor’s song and turns it into an old man’s accounting of what he has broken. The cover is, in effect, a sung apology to people who may or may not be listening, which is what most real apologies turn out to be.