What We Can Know

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan is out now (published September 18, 2025).

See if this book is on Audible

What We Can Know

Get Your Copy Now on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we may earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

What We Can Know Release Date: September 18, 2025

Published

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.

“It gave me so much pleasure I sometimes felt like laughing. . . . It’s a sophisticated entertainment of a high order.” —The New York Times

“Brilliantly, and surprisingly, plotted.”—The Washington Post • “A novelist of consummate skill.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Elegantly structured and provocative.”—Los Angeles Times

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.

Get Your Copy Now on Amazon

📚 Ready to read? Secure your copy today and be among the first to enjoy this release.

Reader Anticipation Rating:
[Average Rating: 0]

Book Club Journal: Reading Log For Adults & Kids Who Love Books!
Book Club Journal: Reading Log For Adults & Kids Who Love Books!
Check Latest Price
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

Genre: Science Fiction

Ian McEwan

More books from Ian McEwan

🎧 While You Wait for What We Can Know

Prefer audiobooks?

Check Audible to see if What We Can Know is available to listen to.

Start a free trial and get your first audiobook free.

✔ Listen while commuting or relaxing
✔ Your first audiobook is free with the trial
✔ Cancel anytime

Start Audible Free Trial

Book Club Journal: Reading Log For Adults & Kids Who Love Books!
Book Club Journal: Reading Log For Adults & Kids Who Love Books!
Check Latest Price
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

Recommended Book Release Guides

Similar Books Liked By Our Readers

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *