Question 7

'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 CummingWho 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 Toibin Magnificent Tim Winton'It s a big call to make for a Booker winner, but Question 7 could be Richard Flanagan s greatest yet' Guardian