Book description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE…
- Coming soon!
Why read it?
2 authors picked What We Can Know as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Ian McEwan tells an eminently readable story about a lost poem. But his book is about much more than this. Through its exploration of the relationship between past, present and future comes a warning of the need to value what we have now and to plan for a viable future. His depiction of the world of 2119 - less than a century away - is a fascinating but chilling one of the consequences of not heeding the incontrovertible signs of climate change and the world that has been lost. This story of the future reveals the lack of foresight of…
Ian McEwan takes us into our presumptions, our blithe and superficial readings of other people's lives, and then upends them, along with any smugness that may remain. It is also a shot across the bow of academia, which always makes me smile.
If you love What We Can Know...
Existential Smut 2
Stories, essays & dialogues about art, imagination & the erotic life. A young man named Charles writes a series of erotic tales, and his bookish friend Lisa offers light-hearted critiques of them.
Some stories feel like erotic meditations or random erotic moments in a young man's life. Others start with…
Want books like What We Can Know?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like What We Can Know.
📚 If you like What We Can Know, you might also like...
The Last Bird of Paradise
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career…
Resting Places
Resting Places follows one woman’s journey after the devastating news of her son’s death. Elizabeth ekes out a lonely and strained relationship with her husband while trying to lose her grief in alcohol. A chance meeting with a man on the side of the road spurs her to travel cross-country…