The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode: Ian McEwan on Imagining the World After Disaster
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Ian McEwan
Date: November 28, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features a live conversation between David Remnick and celebrated British novelist Ian McEwan, recorded at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The main focus is McEwan's latest book, What We Can Know, a speculative novel set a century in the future after a series of global disasters. The discussion explores McEwan's evolving writing process, themes of pessimism and hope in the face of catastrophe, the role of literature in contemporary society, and questions of memory, empathy, and the responsibilities of the novelist.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of a Novel: Process and Inspiration

• McEwan reflects on his creative process, noting the importance of non-writing periods and longhand notebook entries as spaces for disparate ideas to coalesce (02:51–04:46).
  • Notable Influence: A poem by John Fuller and moral philosophy about duties to future generations inspired What We Can Know (03:33).
  • The Long Now Foundation’s efforts to preserve basic knowledge for post-catastrophic societies also contributed to the concept.

“I've got awfully good over the years at not writing... the liberation of longhand... things that have been on my mind that seem completely disparate might suddenly converge.”
—Ian McEwan (02:51)

2. Speculative Fiction and Real-world Catastrophes

• The dystopian, yet not entirely hopeless, future McEwan imagines features nuclear war and climate collapse, but also the painful survival of civilization (05:01–06:50).
  • Limited nuclear wars and subsequent climate cooling paradoxically give humanity "another shot" at combating climate change.
  • McEwan dubs this "nuanced optimism."

“One of the things that happens in 2036 is a nuclear exchange... Only 10 million people die... the good thing about all this is that so much dust is put up in the air that the earth cools by about 2 degrees, and we get another shot at doing something serious about climate change.”
—Ian McEwan (05:16)

3. Morality, Politics, and the Role of the Novel

• McEwan distances himself from overtly moralizing fiction, emphasizing instead the novel’s capacity for exploration and shared inquiry (07:39–09:35).
  • He criticizes contemporary fiction for being overly concerned with self rather than society and calls for bold, declarative literary voices.

“Generally, what draws me in now... I want some writer to give me back something about now... human nature under the conditions of modernity.”
—Ian McEwan (07:58)

• He celebrates literary influences who captured "the feel of now," like John Updike and Toni Morrison.

4. Evolution as a Writer & the Demands of Craft

• Early works were “dark, weird, perverse,” McEwan admits, but over time his fiction became broader in scope (09:46–11:54).
  • Discusses how research and collaboration helped expand his themes.
  • Writing has become easier with experience, yet those immersive, "flow" moments remain rare and treasured (12:12–13:57).

“Those two or three hours where you just barely know you exist... you are completely the thing that you're doing... Those are the moments I still live for.”
—Ian McEwan (13:21)

5. The Pleasure (and Myth) of the Writing Life

• Challenges the romanticization of writing as suffering, seeing instead a life of privilege and learning (14:01–14:59).

“I don't believe a word of it. I think there isn't a nicer life... Every novel is like going to university, as it were. Three or four years, total absorption. And yet you're still free.”
—Ian McEwan (14:19)

• Praises research for offering access to extraordinary experiences, such as shadowing surgeons, and for deepening his materialist worldview (15:00–16:59).

6. The Realist Novel: Relevance in a Distracted Age

• Remnick asks if the realist novel is losing ground in contemporary life (19:28–21:52).
  • McEwan argues it remains vital, offering unique insights into human nature, despite declining readership stats.
  • Literary festivals and engaged audiences still offer hope.

“The realist novel, well written, is our best instrument of understanding who we are... We have not yet found a compelling replacement.”
—Ian McEwan (20:38)

7. Memory, History, and Societal Amnesia

• McEwan draws on personal tragedy (his mother's dementia) to inform a subplot in the novel, paralleling individual memory loss with society's forgetting of history (21:52–25:44).
  • Warns of the dangers when collective memory of traumatic events like the World Wars vanishes.

“What happens when a society gets Alzheimer's is my worry, and becomes sort of reckless and ignorant and mouthy... Power is difficult and needs its constraints and it seems to be getting forgotten.”
—Ian McEwan (24:50)

8. Empathy, Imagination, and the Limits of Representation

• The conversation turns to debates over whether writers should create characters outside their own identity (gender, race, etc.) (26:47–29:23).
  • McEwan forcefully defends the novelist’s imaginative freedom and rejects restricting dictums.

“The reduction to absurdity of that kind of point of view is you can only write about yourself... it's nonsense. And anyway, who are these people telling you what to write? Guardians of the culture. I mean, have you.”
—Ian McEwan (27:29)

9. Afterlife of Books and Literary Legacy

• Discusses authorial legacy and the inevitability of posthumous obscurity before possible rediscovery (29:23–30:56).
  • Advises, wryly: “Don’t die.”

“It's quite a bad career move for novelists to die... They sort of sink into some kind of pit and then some of them crawl out of it about 10 or 15 years later.”
—Ian McEwan (29:43)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On optimism and the future:
  “My assumption is with a lot of trouble and pain and heartache, we will scrape through somehow.” (05:16, Ian McEwan)
• On writing from others' perspectives:
  “If you make a list of all the differences in men and women, it would be shorter than all the similarities. Okay, so humans, they're other humans. I just try to write them as sympathetically as I can.” (28:17, Ian McEwan)
• On the novelist’s role:
  “Trying to understand, you know, just taking a stab of the feel of now.” (08:39, Ian McEwan)
• Humor—Legacy advice:
  “Don’t die.” (30:56, Ian McEwan)

Important Timestamps

• 02:51–04:46 – McEwan’s creative process, notebook, philosophical/moral themes.
• 05:01–06:50 – The dystopian future of What We Can Know: nuclear wars, nuanced optimism.
• 07:39–09:35 – The novelist’s role; shift from the personal to the social.
• 12:12–13:57 – Early writing challenges, finding creative “flow.”
• 14:01–14:59 – Pleasure and learning in the writing life.
• 20:38–21:52 – Defense of the realist novel; reading in modern life.
• 21:52–25:44 – Individual vs. societal memory; dangers of forgetting history.
• 26:47–29:23 – Imagination and representation; dismissal of "write only yourself" creeds.
• 29:23–30:56 – Reflections on literary legacy and mortality.

Conclusion

Ian McEwan’s conversation with David Remnick traverses a broad landscape: from the blend of philosophy, art, and empirical knowledge that shapes his novels, to sober reflections on apocalypse and memory, and provocative takes on contemporary literary culture. Through humor and a touch of acerbity, McEwan ultimately asserts the enduring necessity and freedom of the novelist—both as a chronicler of now and as an explorer of what it means to be human, even in a world staggered by disaster.