{"product_id":"9781787335738","title":"What We Can Know by Ian McEwan","description":"**SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS FICTION AWARD 2025**'McEwan's most richly layered work' Sunday Times'A gripping page-turner' Observer'A daring, beautiful novel, full of wisdom and heart' Elif Shafak'A big, unabashed crowd-pleaser' TLSA 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.   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, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.   When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.   What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55897524437365,"sku":"9781787335738","price":22.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781787335738.jpg?v=1757001187","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781787335738","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}