What We Can Know

From the Booker prizeΓÇôwinning,bestselling author of Atonement and Saturdaya genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive explorationacross time and historyof what can ever be truly known. 2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleaguesrenowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wifeΓÇÖs birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to herΓÇÿA Corona for VivienΓÇÖ. Much wine is drunk as the guests listenand 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 poema copy of which has never been foundand which remains an enduring mystery. 2119: Just over one hundred years in the futuremuch 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 EnglandThomas Metcalfea lonely scholar and researcherlongs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poemΓÇÿA Corona for VivianΓÇÖ. How wild and full of risk their lives werethinks Thomasas he pores over the archives of that distant eracaptivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poemΓÇÖs discoverya 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 masterpiecea fictional tour de forcea love story about both people and the words they leave behinda literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.