2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again.
For generations, people speculate about its message. 2119: With the UK's lowlands submerged by rising seas, those who survive are haunted by all that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, a university scholar, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, he reveals a story of entangled love and a brutal crime that challenges everything he thought he knew about the past. What We Can Know may well have created a new genre' Sunday Times Brilliantly plotted In What We Can Know, the past is an irresistible riddle' Washington Post Propulsive entertaining and enjoyable' Financial Times A dazzling novel' Independent Haunting, playful and ultimately hopeful A wonderful book' Kaliane Bradley A poignant love letter to the vanishing past' Guardian*A BOOK OF THE YEAR for the Sunday Times, Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Spectator, New Yorker, i Paper and Barack Obama*