Ian McEwan has a new novel on the horizon.
On Feb. 7, Alfred A. Knopf announced the acclaimed author’s latest novel, What We Can Know, forthcoming from the publisher this fall.
The novel is set in two distinct time periods, per its synopsis. At a dinner party in 2014, poet Francis Blundy honors his wife with a poem titled “A Corona for Vivien,” which, unbeknownst to those in attendance, will have lasting effects on future generations.
In 2119, in a world reeling from a nuclear catastrophe, scholar and researcher Thomas Metcalfe is on the hunt for the poem, of which a copy has never been found. When Thomas discovers a lead in the case, he uncovers a story of love and crime that will drastically alter his understanding of people he thought he knew, in the novel described as “a fictional tour de force” by its publisher.
“Ian McEwan is one of our finest writers and What We Can Know delivers one of the most immersive and exhilarating reading experiences in recent memory,” says Knopf executive vice president, publisher and editor-in-chief Jordan Pavlin in a statement shared with PEOPLE. “It’s a literary love story, a murder mystery with a thrilling twist and a gorgeously written novel about time and memory. The plot pivots on a legendary dinner party and the recitation of a poem that is heard once and then lost for all time.”
“As the title suggests, the book calls into question the limits of our knowledge about our most intimate companions, and about history itself,” Pavlin continues. “How many irrecoverable secrets and stories are lost to the past? McEwan’s genius in this novel is to recover, in an exquisite feat of a storytelling, a long-lost secret. The effect is electrifying.”
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McEwan has published 17 books and two short story collections. His novel Amsterdam won the 1988 Booker Prize, and many of his books have been adapted for the screen, including Atonement, starring Keira Knightley, as well as the novels Enduring Love, On Chesil Beach and The Children Act.
Of his latest release, McEwan notes that he was inspired to write about history as a way to enable different time periods to be in conversation with one another.
“What We Can Know is science fiction without the science,” the author says in the statement. “This is a novel about history, and what we can know of it, and of each other. We live our lives between the dead and the yet-to-be-born. Of the dead we know a little, but not as much as we think. About the present, we disagree fiercely. People of the future, of course, are beyond our reckoning, but we’re troubled by what we’ll bequeath them. As they look back at us, what will our descendants think, when they contemplate the diminished world we left them? They might envy us.”
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“To catch at these thoughts, I’ve written a novel about a quest, a crime, revenge, fame, a tangled love affair, mental illness, love of nature and poetry and how — through all natural and self-inflicted catastrophes — we have the knack of surviving somehow,” McEwan continues.
“In our times, we know more about the world than we ever did, and such knowledge will be hard to erase. Our great-great-grandchildren will scrape through, and we won’t be around to count the cost or take the blame. My ambition in this novel was to let the past, present and future address each other across the barriers of time.”
What We Can Know will be published on Sept. 16 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.
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