null Skip to main content

Book subscriptions | Free UK postage on orders over £25

What We Can Know

Format: Hardback
RRP: £22.00
£19.80
Save £2.20 (10%)

Free UK P&P on online orders over £25

Adding to basket… The item has been added

'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.

Write a Review

There are no reviews for this product yet - be the first

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

Customers also bought