Question 7
The extraordinary and original Sunday Times bestseller
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4.5 • 15 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**
**Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024**
From one kiss comes a chain reaction – a masterpiece of memoir from the winner of the Baillie Gifford and the Booker prize
‘Extraordinary’ Sarah Perry
‘Masterpiece’ Colm Tóibín
‘Wholly original. I absolutely loved it’ David Nicholls
‘A brilliant, brilliant book’ James Rebanks
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, this chain of events culminates in a young man finding himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river, not knowing if he is to live or to die…
‘The strangest and most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read. Magnificent' Tim Winton
‘Flanagan’s finest book... A brilliant meditation on the past of one man and the history that coalesced in his existence’ Guardian
‘Flanagan’s portrayal of his quiet, brave father and his loving, resilient mother is exquisite. His evocation of the texture of life in rural Tasmania is masterful’ Daily Telegraph
‘A beautiful, unclassifiable novel-cum-memoir… That it is a masterpiece is without question’ Observer
‘Sometimes a book is an experience felt almost in the body… A celebration of all life, it is also a reckoning with the 20th century... It is intimate, beautiful, unsparing and profound' Anna Funder
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Booker Prize winner Flanagan (Toxic) weaves strands about his parents, Australian history, and the atomic bomb into a mesmerizing narrative tapestry in this dazzling, one-of-a-kind memoir. Flanagan begins with a meditation on how his father was interned in a Japanese POW camp near Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb. He considers how the experience shaped his father into a man who saw life as a "great tragicomedy." He contrasts his father with his more passionate mother, and reflects on the ways their combined "life force" saw them through poverty and pain. His examination of their relationship leads him to the affair between British writers H.G. Wells and Rebecca West, and then to Wells's writings on the atom bomb. Further digressions delve into Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard's warnings against nuclear energy, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and Tasmania's colonial history; recurring themes of mortality culminate in a recollection of Flanagan's near-drowning at the age of 21. Lyrical prose ("He would smile wanly, his face turning inside out, a concertina of wrinkles compressing his eyes into wry sunken currants") complements the book's oblique structure, aiding Flanagan in his construction of a bracing dreamscape that blends fiction, family, and history to illuminate his captivating consciousness. This is masterful.
Customer Reviews
Good read
A lovely insight into the mind of a writer. I was riveted.
It’s beautiful
This is one of the best.