Seven - by Joanna Kavenna (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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

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.

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

Review Quotes

"Joanna Kavenna. What a writer." - Ali Smith

"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

"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

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