Extract: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
In 2014, a remarkable poem is read aloud—and then lost, leaving generations
to wonder at its meaning. By 2119, rising seas have submerged the UK’s
lowlands, and survivors mourn the richness of the vanished world. Tom
Metcalfe, a scholar on Britain’s scattered archipelagos, studies early twenty-
first-century archives, captivated by humanity’s past freedoms. When he