Question 7

Richard Flanagan writes a remarkably astonishing multi-genre, imaginative and speculative memoir that he describes as a love song to Tasmania, its history, his family, and a world that has vanished, questioning history's too often linear and limiting perspective,, and the sense and stories we personally construct of who we are and how we come to be where we are in the present. Anton Chekov's satirical and absurd Question 7 is cited, Who loves longer, a man or a woman? He juxtaposes the bleak darkest of tragedies, the devastating bombing of Hiroshima, with the serendipity that it simultaneously is the reason that he exists at all as his father was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, a situation in which he would have surely died.

The dropping of the atomic bomb is traced backed to HG Wells and his love affair with Rebecca West, the break up of which has him writing The World Set Free, a book that inspired scientist Leo Szilar and traces the follow up to the horrors of the bomb itself. This characterises the chain reactions, a thoughtful set of circular life connections that Flanagan makes, including the part played by British colonialism in genocide and the destruction of the natural world. He is offering the kind of surprising insights and perspectives that undoubtedly will challenge accepted realities and make people think. He is unsparing in relating his failings and his frightening near death experience in a river.

This is a profound, philosophical and emotional read, a revealing, captivating memoir that takes in the bigger picture amidst the more personal and which I found utterly gripping as it shines a critical light on what is accepted as reality. It is a unforgettable brilliant 'memoir' that I have no hesitation in saying this is a must read and am recommending it to all readers, particularly as I believe this is the best thing that this acclaimed author has written! Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I received the chance to read this book as it’s not my usual type of book. I was pleasantly surprised. Very well written. Great stories.