Description

DATE OF RELEASE: 18 SEPT 2025

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, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.

Hardback
Publication: 18 Sept 2025, Jonathan Cape

ISBN: 9781787335738

Extent: 400 pages

Product form
  • David's Bookshop

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (PRE-ORDER)

    DATE OF RELEASE: 18 SEPT 2025 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people... Read more

    £22.00 £19.80

        • Guaranteed secure & safe checkout.

          shop pay

        Description

        DATE OF RELEASE: 18 SEPT 2025

        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, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

        What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.

        Hardback
        Publication: 18 Sept 2025, Jonathan Cape

        ISBN: 9781787335738

        Extent: 400 pages

        Login

        Forgot your password?

        Don't have an account yet?
        Create account