Question 7

Richard Flanagan

£18.99

In stock

“Richard Flanagan has created a moving and gripping memoir, capturing the horrors of his father's incarceration in the Second World War (as recounted in the Booker Winner Narrow Road to the Deep North), the arrival of the Atomic Bomb, first envisaged by H G Wells and his near death from drowning while canoeing at the age of 21. His laser clear view of what it means to be a human makes it a privilege to read and accompany him on his reflections of growing up in Tasmania, an island with a haunted and guilty past.”
Question 7
Review by Patrick Neale

Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, ‘Question 7’ is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of H.G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan’s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.

ISBN: 9781784745677 Categories: ,

Description

‘A memoir about [Flanagan’s] parents, interwoven with meditations on Tasmania, genocide, colonialism, the atomic bomb, H.G. Wells and Rebecca West . . . A masterpiece’ Mark Haddon

Devastating and beautiful, mighty in its rage and tenderness: his most momentous book yet’ Laura Cumming

Who loves longer?

Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows.

By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagan’s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river, not knowing if he is to live or to die.

Flanagan has created a love song to his island home and his parents and the terrible past that delivered him to that place. Through a hypnotic melding of dream, history, science and memory it shows how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.

‘Spectacular . . . It seems to me a book that will have an overwhelming effect on readers. It certainly did on me’ Colm Tóibìn

MagnificentTim Winton

‘It’s a big call to make for a Booker winner, but Question 7 could be Richard Flanagan’s greatest yet’ Guardian

Additional information

Weight 0.396 kg
Dimensions 22.3 × 14.5 × 2.6 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Hardback

Pages

256

Language

English

Dewey

823.92 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

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