Ian McEwan Casts the Climate Crisis as a Story of Adultery

At the start of “What We Can Know,” Ian McEwan’s eighteenth novel, the year is 2119 and the humanities are still in crisis. Thomas Metcalfe, a scholar of the literature of 1990 to 2030, props up his lectures with jokes and colorful animations; he and his colleague Rose, who is also his lover, speak to students in “cheery sing-song voices, as if addressing a pre-school class.” Midway through the twenty-first century, a nuclear disaster sent tsunamis curling over the continents, sinking New York and Rotterdam and turning the United Kingdom into an archipelago. With much of the past decomposing underwater, it’s hard to blame young people for preferring “things that are new, like the latest toys and novelties of Nigerian pop culture,” Tom reflects. He imagines the inner monologues of his stude