From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known.
2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.
2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he 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 elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal 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, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known.
2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.
2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he 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 elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal 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, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
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Find What We Can Know Ian McEwan in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find What We Can Know Ian McEwan in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
10 books in catalog
Explorations of psychological tension, moral dilemmas, and the sudden disruption of ordinary life define one of contemporary British fiction's most widely read bodies of work, notably exemplified by the critically acclaimed novel Atonement. Ian McEwan established his career through meticulously crafted prose that examines how intimate personal choices intersect with broader historical, scientific, and social forces.
Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, receiving a BA degree in English Literature in 1970, and later earned an MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. His debut short story collection, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. Early works such as The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers featured dark, shocking subjects that earned him the nickname 'Ian Macabre' in the British press. Over subsequent decades, his literary repertoire broadened to cover family dynamics, political intrigue, and contemporary history.
McEwan received widespread international honors throughout his career. His 1987 novel The Child in Time won the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Étranger (1993). He was awarded Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999 and was named a CBE in 2000. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize on several occasions, he won the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), the Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday, and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards, where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year. McEwan lives in London.
McEwan's prose style is known for combining formal restraint and precise observation with sudden unsettling turns, exploring human vulnerability, guilt, and moral responsibility. A recurring structural theme across his novels is the single pivotal moment—an error in judgment, a tragic accident, or an unexpected encounter—that alters the course of characters' lives forever. In addition to psychological realism, his work reflects a deep engagement with science, rationalism, and technology, as seen in Machines Like Me and What We Can Know. His narrative range spans screenplays, short fiction, and novels that probe the intersection of personal conscience and public events.
10 books in catalog
Explorations of psychological tension, moral dilemmas, and the sudden disruption of ordinary life define one of contemporary British fiction's most widely read bodies of work, notably exemplified by the critically acclaimed novel Atonement. Ian McEwan established his career through meticulously crafted prose that examines how intimate personal choices intersect with broader historical, scientific, and social forces.
Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, receiving a BA degree in English Literature in 1970, and later earned an MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. His debut short story collection, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. Early works such as The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers featured dark, shocking subjects that earned him the nickname 'Ian Macabre' in the British press. Over subsequent decades, his literary repertoire broadened to cover family dynamics, political intrigue, and contemporary history.
McEwan received widespread international honors throughout his career. His 1987 novel The Child in Time won the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Étranger (1993). He was awarded Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999 and was named a CBE in 2000. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize on several occasions, he won the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), the Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday, and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards, where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year. McEwan lives in London.
McEwan's prose style is known for combining formal restraint and precise observation with sudden unsettling turns, exploring human vulnerability, guilt, and moral responsibility. A recurring structural theme across his novels is the single pivotal moment—an error in judgment, a tragic accident, or an unexpected encounter—that alters the course of characters' lives forever. In addition to psychological realism, his work reflects a deep engagement with science, rationalism, and technology, as seen in Machines Like Me and What We Can Know. His narrative range spans screenplays, short fiction, and novels that probe the intersection of personal conscience and public events.
