Seven - by Joanna Kavenna (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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

"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

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

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

"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's two decades as a writer have seen her beat a gorgeously unconventional path through a plethora of subjects and genres, from polar exploration to motherhood to economic inequality, and from travelogue to academic satire to technological dystopia."--A K Blakemore, the Guardian

Praise for Seven

"Exuberantly inventive...In the labyrinthine manner of Orhan Pamuk or Umberto Eco, the novel playfully explores symbols and the ways their meanings evolve across time."--Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"Sly and dexterous."--Tarpley Hitt, The Paris Review

"Fans of Yoko Tawada will appreciate this whimsical and philosophical tale."--Publishers Weekly

"A smart, meditative journey that is at once deeply funny and moving."--Booklist

"Beautifully crafted, challengingly brainy, and playfully edgy."--Library Journal

"Sparkling, audacious."--Nina Allan, Times Literary Supplement

"The most brilliant novel I've read in ages, part academic satire, part philosophy of AI and gaming, all hubris-puncturing wisdom worn with such levity that I was cackling from start to finish."--Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

"[Kavenna] is a writer of genuine elegance, intelligence and understated emotions. It is encouraging that there are those who still follow the pellucid postmodernism of Italo Calvino."--Stuart Kelly, Spectator

"Philosophical concepts and dizzying speculations on the nature of reality have always featured in Kavenna's novels, but here she ramps up the comedy, interleaving erudite playfulness with characters who are as believable as they are eccentric."--Suzi Feay, Financial Times

"Thoroughly pleasurable."--Camilla Grudova, the Telegraph

About the Author