Join Ian McEwan and George Monbiot for a celebration of the extraordinary tenacity of the human spirit and a journey into a climate-ravaged future where all is not quite lost.

Since his immediate rise to literary acclaim 50 years ago for his taut, unflinching short stories about love and desire, to his latest voyages into the uncharted territories of climate change and AI, one thing has remained consistent across Ian McEwan’s astonishing oeuvre: the precision with which he can dissect both the mysteries of the human psyche and the tribulations of our age.

Now he joins George Monbiot to reveal What We Can Know: a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our looming sense of catastrophe and asks profound questions about who we are and where we are going.

2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people have speculated 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 a lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroys his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

Don’t miss this exclusive conversation between Britain’s foremost environmental activist and its most distinguished novelist as they explore love, loss, survival, the life of the artist and the power of literature in the face of climate breakdown.

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of 17 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, which was a number-one bestseller, and Lessons. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

All tickets to this event include a copy of Ian McEwan’s new novel What We Can Know (RRP £22).

There will be a post-event book signing in the main foyer.