{"product_id":"what-we-can-know-isbn-9798217007943","title":"What We Can Know","description":"\u003cb\u003eINSTANT \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER \/ From the Booker Prize–winning, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eAtonement\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSaturday, \u003c\/i\u003ea genre-bending novel full of secrets and surprises, and an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2014: 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 is consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come, people will speculate about the message of this poem, the only copy of  which goes missing, leading to an enduring mystery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the planet 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 waterlogged 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 Vivien.\" \u003ci\u003eHow wild and full of risk their lives were,\u003c\/i\u003e thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant period, captivated by the vivid romances, politics, and betrayals of the era. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s location, a story is revealed of entangled loves, long-kept secrets, and a brutal crime that destroys his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat We Can Know\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterpiece: a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, and a literary detective story that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.“It gave me so much pleasure I sometimes felt like laughing. . . . It’s a sophisticated entertainment of a high order.”\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eWhat We Can Know\u003c\/i\u003e feels like a direct descendant of \u003ci\u003eAtonement\u003c\/i\u003e, McEwan’s most beloved work, where an illicit relationship generates unexpected tremors, and fantasy and memory rush into the gaps between facts.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is all brilliantly, and surprisingly, plotted. . . . [T]here is a daring realignment that boldly shifts the perspective and demonstrates with shocking intensity how little we can ever really grasp about the strange evasions of the heart.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McEwan is a novelist of consummate skill, and his latest book is a deeply intelligent addition to—perhaps even a crowning of—his oeuvre.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] carefully plotted literary novel with insightful characterisation and the propulsive drive of a thriller. . . . McEwan’s most entertaining and enjoyable novel for years.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McEwan’s elegantly structured and provocative novel is a strong argument for how little raw data, or even the most sublime art, can tell us about humans and their contrary natures.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eL.A. Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“McEwan’s prose has never been looser or more humane. . . . The sentences are warm even when the world they describe has cooled due to nuclear dust settling into the atmosphere as The Derangement faded. . . . McEwan, who turned 77 this year, writes with the lucidity of a craftsman who knows he’s constructing his own monument to a future he will never know. . . . If \u003ci\u003eAtonement \u003c\/i\u003easked whether fiction could redeem guilt,\u003ci\u003e What We Can Know\u003c\/i\u003e suggests that the very possibility of redemption might be foolhardy.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McEwan fans, rejoice: the novel ranks high among his oeuvre… close to \u003ci\u003eAtonement\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAmsterdam\u003c\/i\u003e.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eWhat We Can Know\u003c\/i\u003e may well have created a new genre: the postapocalyptic campus novel. Imagine AS Byatt’s \u003ci\u003ePossession\u003c\/i\u003e crossed with Cormac McCarthy’s \u003ci\u003eThe Road\u003c\/i\u003e. Dark academia meets the big ideas novel, all conveyed in McEwan’s trim, beautifully ordered sentences.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A big, unabashed crowd-pleaser…\u003ci\u003e What We Can Know\u003c\/i\u003e delivers one of McEwan’s finest comic set pieces… [and] can be read as an optimist’s manifesto, a rage against our consensus of decline… [and] a cautionary tale of unchecked nostalgia.” \u003cb\u003e―\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] dazzling novel… [\u003ci\u003eWhat We Can Know\u003c\/i\u003e] has an eloquent fury about the way our misguided present is allowing nature to shrivel by ‘slow roasting.’” \u003cb\u003e―\u003ci\u003eIndependent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McEwan’s arrestingly relevant new novel… [is] a fiercely involving biblio-mystery deepened by musings on knowledge and understanding, time and memory.” \u003cb\u003e―\u003ci\u003eMail on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A philosophically charged tour de force by one of the best living novelists in English.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] powerful homage to a lost era … McEwan has achieved something spectacular and much needed, as he raises question about the climate crisis—future and present. Readers will also find in it meditations on the value of the humanities, the work of poets and biographers, the difference between knowledge of and poetical apotheosizing of nature, and a beautiful recognition of what it means to search for human bonds in words and on pages…. McEwan has crafted a story at once nostalgic and foreboding.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McEwan offers up a heady, intellectual tale that takes a searing look at how history is created—and distorted…. Dealing with themes as weighty as the inexorable forward progress of humankind, and the relevance of the past in a world where the present is both ‘loud and ruthless,’ McEwan proves once again he is both a master of his craft and a gimlet-eyed observer of the human condition.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003eIAN McEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, \u003ci\u003eFirst Love, Last Rites, \u003c\/i\u003ewon the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include \u003ci\u003eThe Child in Time,\u003c\/i\u003e which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; \u003ci\u003eThe Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam,\u003c\/i\u003e which won the 1998 Booker Prize; \u003ci\u003eAtonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell;\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Machines Like Me,\u003c\/i\u003e which was a number-one bestseller. \u003ci\u003eAtonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eOn Chesil Beach\u003c\/i\u003e have all been adapted for the big screen.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48532225523941,"sku":"NP9798217007943","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9798217007943.jpg?v=1773183114","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/what-we-can-know-isbn-9798217007943","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}