Question 7

'Question 7 could be Richard Flanagan’s greatest yet' Guardian
‘A masterpiece’ Mark Haddon

This is a book about the choices we make 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, 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 Tóibín


Richard Flanagan, Winner of the Booker Prize 2014