What We Can Know

''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.

About the author

Ian McEwan

Product details

• Authors: Ian McEwan
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Release: 18.06.2026
• EAN: 9781529959208
• ISBN: 978-1-5299-5920-8
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Fiction: special features, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, Speculative fiction, United Kingdom, Great Britain, FICTION / World Literature / England / 21st Century, FICTION / Nature & the Environment, FICTION / Multiple Timelines, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: love / relationships