'McEwan’s most richly layered work' Sunday Times
'A gripping page-turner' Observer
'A daring, beautiful novel, full of wisdom and heart' Elif Shafak
'A big, unabashed crowd-pleaser' TLS
A quest, a literary thriller and a love story, What We Can Know spans the past, present and future to ask profound questions about who we are and where we are going.
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.
What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
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What We Can Know 9781787335738 Hardback
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- Authors:
- McEwan, Ian
- Year Published:
- 2025
- Publication Date:
- 18/09/2025
- Publisher:
- Vintage Publishing
- Format:
- Hardback
- Number of Pages:
- 320
- ISBN:
- 9781787335738
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Language:
- English
- SKU:
- 9781787335738