Ian McEwan casts the climate crisis in a startling new light: as a story of global adultery in his 18th novel, What We Can Know, per newyorker.com.
The narrative opens in a dystopian 2119, on an Earth ravaged by environmental catastrophe where the UK is a mere archipelago. From this bleak future, historian Thomas Metcalfe looks back, romanticising our current era as a lost golden age. He becomes obsessed with a 2014 dinner party hosted by a famous poet, Francis Blundy, viewing it as a symbol of a civilisation that could still enjoy nature’s plenitude before the great “Inundation.”
However, McEwan skillfully peels back this nostalgic veneer, revealing the characters of 2014 as self-absorbed and duplicitous. The celebrated poet is exposed as a fraud, his acclaimed ode to nature mere “fakery,” and the party’s guests are entangled in webs of infidelity.
Herein lies the novel’s powerful metaphor: our generation’s relationship with the planet is a profound act of betrayal. Like unfaithful spouses, we profess love for the natural world while our destructive actions cheat future generations. By framing climate inaction as a deeply personal story of broken trust, McEwan transforms an abstract crisis into a tangible, emotional drama of a promise catastrophically broken. “What We Can Know” serves as a poignant elegy for a world we claim to love but are actively betraying.
•Featured image: Ian McEwan/Getty Images
