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

'Full of wisdom and heart. I loved it' Elif Shafak

'A gripping page-turner' Observer

'It gave me so much pleasure' New York Times

2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message.

2119: With the UK's lowlands submerged by rising seas, those who survive are haunted by all that has been lost.

Tom Metcalfe, a university scholar, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, he reveals a story of entangled love and a brutal crime that challenges everything he thought he knew about the past.

'A dazzling novel' Independent

'A poignant love letter to the vanishing past' Guardian

'Haunting, playful and ultimately hopeful... A wonderful book' Kaliane Bradley

*A BOOK OF THE YEAR for the Sunday Times, Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Spectator, New Yorker, i Paper and Barack Obama*

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; Machines Like Me; and Lessons. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.