Question 7

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan (2024) 280pp

Flanagan, winner of the Booker Prize, combines an ode to his father and a brief history of his homeland into a memoir using masterful literary devices and extraordinary writing. Starting with a search for information on the prison camp in Japan where his father was held Flanagan weaves in Rebecca West, H.G. Wells, Leo Szilard, the crew of the Enola Gay, and the indigenous people of Tasmania with a tale of his father and Flanagan’s extended family. The first half of the book startled me with exquisite sentences and leaps of time and place. Only later, when the literary puzzle pieces began to fit tighter, did I realize that this is a reworked compilation of previous writings. My only disappointment was a lengthy description of his near fatal kayak accident -- although critical to the memoir aspect of the book -- it seemed gratuitous and an awkward fit in such an otherwise outstanding book.