Ian McEwan

Simon Mayo's Books of the Year

Bauer Media

Arts, Books

4.9 • 994 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

International bestselling author, Ian McEwan, joins Simon and Matt for a chat about his new novel 'What We Can Know'. Optimistic manifesto? Or a cautious tale? In the first half of the book, we learn about a lost poem - which is at the heart of the novel - as this is ultimately a book about a quest. As well as poetry, they talk about renewable energies being on the rise and the positive conversations around climate change. 'you only have to stop doing bad things to nature, for it to push back quickly' Here's more on the book: 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate 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, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, Matt.
0:01.3	Hello, Simon.
0:02.0	Did you know that if you need to hire, you need Indeed?
0:06.6	Now, I think you've mentioned this before, but tell me more.
0:10.1	Indeed is the matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors,
0:16.6	according to Indeed data.
0:18.5	Yes, that sounds pretty good to me.
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0:23.8	is that it makes hiring so easy because everything is in one place.
0:27.9	But is it a quick process?
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0:30.8	Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences,
0:35.1	leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. So the more
0:40.5	you use, indeed, the better it gets. Listeners to this podcast will get a £100-pound sponsored job credit
0:46.2	to help get your jobs more visibility. Just go to indeed.com slash BOTY. That's indeed.com
0:53.7	slash BOTY. Terms indeed.com slash BOTY.
0:55.1	Terms and conditions apply.
0:57.3	Need to hire?
0:58.6	You need indeed.
1:16.2	Hello and welcome. It's another Books of the Year podcast from your very good friends at Books of the Year, which is a podcast, which we present on a regular basis.
1:21.0	We do indeed. And I think you'll agree we have a pretty stellar lineup of guests between
1:24.2	now and Christmas. We'll be talking to international best-selling novelist Ian McEwen very shortly.
	...

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