Question 7, by Richard Flanagan (Knopf 2023)
![Neil's picture Neil's picture](http://archetype.co.nz/sites/archetype/files/styles/user_thumbnail/public/pictures/picture-5-1542677514.jpg)
Neil
I haven't read Richard Flanagan before, and this seems like a brilliant place to start. Question 7 is a memoir, a meandering, drifty kind of memoir, which shouldn't work, but does work, brilliantly. He writes of his father, enslaved by the Japanese near Hiroshima when the bomb is dropped, through the history of the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, and the life of the Americans who flew the fateful plane. H. G. Wells and Rebecca West feature strongly, as does Tasmania, and the book closes with a tour de force of adventure writing as Flanagan chronicles the incident nearly dies trapped in a canoe in rapids. It's a stunning piece of work, moving, exciting, fascinating.