**Winner of 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 'There's so much . . . in Flanagan's
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 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 ' Question 7 could be
Richard Flanagan's greatest yet' Guardian 'Fiercely alive and genuinely hard to put down'
Mark Haddon
