About the event
In collaboration with Blackwell's, the Bodleian Libraries are delighted to present this very special event. Award-winning author Ian McEwan discusses his new novel, What We Can Know, with Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian.
What We Can Know
'2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.'
Speakers
Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of eighteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; Machines Like Me; and Lessons. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.
Richard Ovenden is Bodley’s Librarian and the Helen Hamlyn Director of the University Libraries. He also serves as Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) at Oxford.
Book tickets
The event takes place in person at the Sheldonian Theatre.
All tickets include a copy of the book. Concession tickets are available with a valid student card.
Book now
Location
Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3AZ
Wheelchair access
The Sheldonian Theatre is wheelchair accessible.
