What We Can Know: A Novel

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK. 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. 2014: 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'. Little does anyone know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem. 2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar, chases the ghost of one poem. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem's discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime.