A university librarian mentioned in a recent conversation how a famous writer had sold his computer hard drive to an American archive without realising this could give future researchers a record of not only his emails but all the internet sites he had ever visited. Ian McEwan was not the author in question, but it is precisely such issues that frame the narrative of his latest novel: the first part is set a hundred years from now, while the second section consists of a fictional journal set in our own recent past. As the novel’s title suggests, a key concern here is epistemology – how lived human experience differs from knowledge in forms of representation and rationalisation.

Tom Metcalfe, a scholar working in the year 2119 at the University of the South Downs and an expert on literature written between 1990 and 2030, is able to easily access information in digital form about the famous poet Francis Blundy, who died in 2017. Metcalfe says he would like to shout advice to ‘the people of a hundred years ago: if you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend. Do not trust the keyboard and screen. If you do, we’ll know everything.’