Question 7

**Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024** 'A work of non-fiction . . . but it has all the complexity of emotional heft of a great novel . . . Question 7 sets the high-water mark for what the genre [of memoir] can be' Sunday Times 'Theres so much . . . in Flanagans beautiful, unclassifiable novel-cum-memoir . . . That it is a masterpiece is without question' Observer This is a book about the choices we make and the chain reaction that follows . . . By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca Wests affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagans 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, Question 7 shows how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves. I was fascinated, troubled, and enchanted by this strange and extraordinary work... I can think of nothing else quite like it Sarah Perry Mighty in its rage and tenderness: his most momentous book yet Laura Cumming 'Spectacular . . . It seems to me a book that will have an overwhelming effect on readers. It certainly did on me' Colm Tibn 'Question 7 could be Richard Flanagans greatest yet' Guardian Fiercely alive and genuinely hard to put down Mark Haddon