Question 7
by Richard Flanagan
Summary
A genre-defying work that connects a chain of apparently unrelated historical moments — the chance encounter between H.G. Wells and a physicist whose work contributed to the atomic bomb, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the story of the author's parents surviving a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on the Thai-Burma railway — into a meditation on how contingency, love, and catastrophe shape individual and collective existence. Flanagan writes in a mode that moves fluidly between memoir, essay, and historical narrative, refusing to stabilise into any single form, and arguing that meaning lies precisely in the connections we discover across time rather than in any single coherent story. The book confirmed his reputation as one of the most formally adventurous writers working in English, and he became the first person to win both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Historical Context & Significance
Flanagan is the first person to win both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize.