Latest news with #WhatWeCanKnow
Scotsman
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Book Festival 2025: Here are 25 past Booker Prize nominees at this year's event
2 . Ian McEwan One of the greatest living writers – and a man who needs no introduction – Ian McEwan will appear during the 2025 Edinburgh International Book Festival ahead of the publication of his new novel, What We Can Know at McEwan Hall on Sunday, August 24. McEwan became a Booker Prize winner in 1998 for his novel Amsterdam and he is one of the few writers to have been nominated on six occasions. | Getty Images
Scotsman
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh International Book Festival 2025: Fiction Highlights
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It's been 12 long years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie last published a novel, but the reviews for Dream Count are so glowing that it seems it's been worth the wait. One of the stars of festival's Front List, she will be appearing (19 August) on stage at the McEwan Hall, when an appropriately large audience will be able to find out why, according to one review, 'nothing less than the whole female experience' is within the scope of her new book. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie PIC:Ian McEwan (no relation) is a welcome repeat visitor to the festival, and has in the past discussed the difficulty of novelists tackling such a diffuse topic as climate change. On the festival's last day (24 August) Kirsty Wark may be able to draw him out on why he has returned to the subject in his next novel, What We Can Know, out in September. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ian McEwan PIC: Stuartfor BFI Also on the McEwan Hall stage, Maggie O'Farrell (15 August) will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of publishing her debut novel, After You'd Gone. Festival director Jenny Niven will chair the event – and might even get some of the skinny on the filming of Hamnet by Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao, starring Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Anne Hathaway. Maggie O'Farrell PIC: Dasha Tenditna Back in the Futures Institute, Abdulrazak Gurnah will be discussing Theft, his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 (10 August), while Australia's Michelle de Kretser – winner of her country's Stella award only a fortnight ago for Theory and Practice, her genre-bending 'fictional memoir' – makes her festival debut (16 August). The following day, our own genre-bender Ali Smith will be discussing her dystopian book Gliff, which de Krester herself has hailed as 'an irresistible invitation to rethink and reword our way to a truly brave new world'. What else? If you're looking for the best of Irish fiction, check out Eimear McBride (21 August) and Colum McCann (18 August); for French, see if Laurent Binet (19 August) can interest you in his epistolary detective story featuring half the artists in the Renaissance; work out if Daniel Kehlmann (9 August) deserves his reputation as the leading German novelist of his generation or why Javier Cercas (19 August) – highly regarded by our own Allan Massie – has long enjoyed similar status in Spain. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I've only room to cram in a few more favourites, but it's impossible to leave out two great double-bills – Alan Hollinghurst appearing alongside Tash Aw (9 August) and Natasha Brown with Hari Kunzru (22 August) or last year's Man Booker winner Samantha Harvey (14 August). The festival's first Thursday is probably the best day to see Scottish writers, as Ewan Morrison, Doug Johnstone, Chris Brookmyre and Denise Mina are all there to talk about their latest novels (Brookmyre's 30th, Mina's 20th) at separate events.
The Independent
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Ian McEwan's next novel, 'What We Can Know,' is science fiction 'without the science'
The next novel by Ian McEwan will be a post-apocalyptic story, set in part in the 22nd century and centered on a scholar's immersion into a poem written during happier times. McEwan, the Booker Prize-winning British author, is calling 'What We Can Know' a work of science fiction 'without the science." 'I've written a novel about a quest, a crime, revenge, fame, a tangled love affair, mental illness, love of nature and poetry, and how, through all natural and self-inflicted catastrophes, we have the knack of surviving," McEwan said in a statement released Friday through Alfred A. Knopf, which announced the book will be published Sept. 16. "In our times, we know more about the world than we ever did, and such knowledge will be hard to erase. My ambition in this novel was to let the past, present and future address each other across the barriers of time.' The 76-year-old McEwan has previously imagined disasters and disruptions — and how we respond — whether the threat of climate change in 'Solar,' a radiation cloud in 'Lessons' or artificial intelligence in 'Machines Like Me.' Knopf publisher and editor-in-chief Jordan Pavlin said in a statement that 'What We Can Know' is an exploration of the 'limits of our knowledge," whether of other people or the arc of the past. 'As the title suggests, the book calls into question the limits of our knowledge about our most intimate companions, and about history itself,' Pavlin said. 'How many irrecoverable secrets and stories are lost to the past? McEwan's genius in this novel is to recover, in an exquisite feat of storytelling, a long-lost secret.'
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ian McEwan's next novel, 'What We Can Know,' is science fiction 'without the science'
NEW YORK (AP) — The next novel by Ian McEwan will be a post-apocalyptic story, set in part in the 22nd century and centered on a scholar's immersion into a poem written during happier times. McEwan, the Booker Prize-winning British author, is calling 'What We Can Know' a work of science fiction 'without the science." 'I've written a novel about a quest, a crime, revenge, fame, a tangled love affair, mental illness, love of nature and poetry, and how, through all natural and self-inflicted catastrophes, we have the knack of surviving," McEwan said in a statement released Friday through Alfred A. Knopf, which announced the book will be published Sept. 16. "In our times, we know more about the world than we ever did, and such knowledge will be hard to erase. My ambition in this novel was to let the past, present and future address each other across the barriers of time.' The 76-year-old McEwan has previously imagined disasters and disruptions — and how we respond — whether the threat of climate change in 'Solar,' a radiation cloud in 'Lessons' or artificial intelligence in 'Machines Like Me.' Knopf publisher and editor-in-chief Jordan Pavlin said in a statement that 'What We Can Know' is an exploration of the 'limits of our knowledge," whether of other people or the arc of the past. 'As the title suggests, the book calls into question the limits of our knowledge about our most intimate companions, and about history itself,' Pavlin said. 'How many irrecoverable secrets and stories are lost to the past? McEwan's genius in this novel is to recover, in an exquisite feat of storytelling, a long-lost secret.'
Associated Press
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Ian McEwan's next novel, ‘What We Can Know,' is science fiction ‘without the science'
NEW YORK (AP) — The next novel by Ian McEwan will be a post-apocalyptic story, set in part in the 22nd century and centered on a scholar's immersion into a poem written during happier times. McEwan, the Booker Prize-winning British author, is calling 'What We Can Know' a work of science fiction 'without the science.' 'I've written a novel about a quest, a crime, revenge, fame, a tangled love affair, mental illness, love of nature and poetry, and how, through all natural and self-inflicted catastrophes, we have the knack of surviving,' McEwan said in a statement released Friday through Alfred A. Knopf, which announced the book will be published Sept. 16. 'In our times, we know more about the world than we ever did, and such knowledge will be hard to erase. My ambition in this novel was to let the past, present and future address each other across the barriers of time.' The 76-year-old McEwan has previously imagined disasters and disruptions — and how we respond — whether the threat of climate change in 'Solar,' a radiation cloud in 'Lessons' or artificial intelligence in 'Machines Like Me.' Knopf publisher and editor-in-chief Jordan Pavlin said in a statement that 'What We Can Know' is an exploration of the 'limits of our knowledge,' whether of other people or the arc of the past. 'As the title suggests, the book calls into question the limits of our knowledge about our most intimate companions, and about history itself,' Pavlin said. 'How many irrecoverable secrets and stories are lost to the past? McEwan's genius in this novel is to recover, in an exquisite feat of storytelling, a long-lost secret.'
