Seven - by Joanna Kavenna (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Timely and timeless - a literary quest novel about trying to stay hopeful in hopeless times.

"One of the most brilliant British writers working today." - Spectator

Who decides the rules of the games we play?

In August 2007, or thereabouts, a young philosopher leaves Oslo, heading for Greece, on a mission to find the head of the Society of Lost Things, Theodoros Apostolakis. Fortunately Apostolakis isn't lost but everything else is: ancient libraries, entire civilisations, priceless books and a beautiful ancient box, once used to play the world-famous game of Seven. The hunt for this small thing, among the countless lost things, becomes an absurdist quest through time and space: from the earliest human societies to the advent of AI.

Told, shared and mythologised by our narrator, along with a wild cast of dreamers, philosophers, poets, rebels and optimists, Seven is an extraordinary, uplifting journey through an ever darkening world.

Review Quotes

Praise for Joanna Kavenna

"To surrender yourself to the revelations of life and then to come back with the assertions of prose: that is the new heroism of the woman writer, and Kavenna is in the vanguard of it."--Rachel Cusk, author of Outline

"Joanna Kavenna. What a writer."--Ali Smith, author of Autumn

"A brilliantly unpredictable novelist: whatever you think she might do next, she doesn't."--Stuart Kelly, Guardian

"Kavenna explores the complex nature of reality and perception with vast imaginative energy and a generous spirit."--A. L. Kennedy

"Kavenna is a Very Intelligent Author...Kavenna's satire has bite and often rings uncomfortably true."--Literary Review

About the Author

Joanna Kavenna is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction including The Ice Museum, Inglorious, The Birth of Love, A Field Guide to Reality and Zed. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the LRB, the New Scientist, the Guardian and the New York Times. In 2008 she won the Women's Prize for New Writing, and in 2013 she was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.