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Join us for a special evening with Ian McEwan, the Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and Saturday as he presents his genre-bending new novel of love, legacy, and literary intrigue. In What We Can Know, Ian McEwan invites us into a world of shifting truths, moving from a candlelit dinner in 2014 where a mysterious poem is read, to a flooded England in 2119, where a lonely scholar searches the archives of a lost century for meaning, connection, and the truth behind a vanished text.

In this exclusive Canadian appearance, McEwan will be in conversation with Kyle Wyatt, Editor of Literary Review of Canada, to discuss his extraordinary new work: a powerful meditation on language, memory, and the enduring desire to make sense of the past. At once a sweeping love story, captivating detective story, and a stark, dystopian vision of the future, What We Can Know explores what remains when so much is lost. 

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear from one of contemporary literature’s most celebrated voices.

TIFA Presents 2025 Season is generously supported by Presenting Donors Beth Nowers and Jack Curtin.

What We Can Know

From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known. 2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed.

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Published by Knopf

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Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award.

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