**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 '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 Richard Flanagan Winner of the Booker Prize 2014
