Skip to content
Description
By: Ian McEwan
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.
You may also like
A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century
Sale priceHK$184.00
Regular priceHK$280.00
Re-stocking soon
熱銷中 Top Trending
Press Start! #16 Super Rabbit Boy vs. the Gigabot!(Branches)
Sale priceHK$48.00
Regular priceHK$98.00
In stock
Rude Science: Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About the Science No One Ever Talks About
Sale priceHK$125.00
Regular priceHK$182.00
In stock
Billy and the Mini Monsters #17 Monsters Go Back to School
Sale priceHK$55.00
Regular priceHK$98.00
In stock
Tales From Acorn Wood Story New 2023 Collection (with QR code audio)(Julia Donaldson) (Axel Scheffler)
Sale priceFrom HK$98.99
Regular priceHK$182.00
In stock
Press Start! #15 Mega Mole Girl Digs Deep! (Branches)
Sale priceHK$48.00
Regular priceHK$98.00
In stock
Press Start! #14 Super Game Book! Special Edition (Branches)
Sale priceHK$55.00
Regular priceHK$90.00
In stock
Usborne Musical Book: The Animal Orchestra Plays Mozart
Sale priceHK$99.00
Regular priceHK$156.00
In stock
New Usborne My First Reading Library - Stage 1 (with QR code Audio)
Sale priceHK$495.00
Regular priceHK$2,793.00
In stock
A Minecraft Movie: The Junior Novelization (Mojang AB)
Sale priceHK$67.00
Regular priceHK$104.00
In stock
Recently viewed
A Clash of Kings: The Illustrated Edition
Sale priceHK$262.00
Regular priceHK$400.00
Re-stocking soon
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024
Sale priceHK$118.00
Regular priceHK$190.00
In stock