What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

In a world submerged by rising seas, can the secrets of the past be discovered? The breathtaking Sunday Times bestseller. ‘Full of wisdom and heart. I loved it’ Elif Shafak‘A gripping page-turner’ Observer‘It gave me so much pleasure’ New York Times2014: 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.