What We Can Know is award-winning veteran author's 18th novel

The first seed of inspiration for Ian McEwan’s newest novel, What We Can Know, was a poem by John Fuller that ran in the Times Literary Supplement in 2021.

McEwan, a Booker Prize-winning British author who has written classics such as Atonement, The Children Act, Amsterdam and Black Dogs, did not think the poem would lead to his epic 18th novel, a centuries-spanning endeavour that is equal parts dystopian tale, love story, character study, domestic drama and intriguing mystery.

But it was one of two seemingly unrelated elements that led to the book.

Fuller’s Marston Meadows: A Corona for Prue was dedicated to the poet’s wife of 65 years. McEwan was impressed with the apparent ease with which Fuller wrote against the constraints of the corona, a technically challenging literary form.

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