What We Can Know
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction, and Speculative Fiction
Reading Month: July 2026
Library Copy: Catalog entry at Warendorf Public Library
Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know is our Pick of the Month for July 2026.
What We Can Know is set in the distant future (2119) and looks back at the early 21st century when “the freedoms and possibilities of human life” were still a thing. Life on earth has changed quite a bit in the years between — due to climate change and war.
Tom Metcalfe, a British scholar obsessed with the cultural aspects of mankind in decline, stumbles upon clues to the whereabouts of a legendary lost poem from 2014, and they lead him right into a much darker entanglement of love, crime, and destruction, changing everything he thought he knew about mankind and life at the turn of an era.
Working Material
- Book Details and Sample on the publisher’s web site
- Introduction and Reviews on GoodReads
- Catalogue Entry of the City Library of Warendorf (one copy is held, check current availability status)
