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Seven

Joanna Kavenna

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

51 in stock

£16.99£14.99
Format
Hardback
ISBN
9780571338153
Date Published
15.01.2026

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Summary

As heard on BBC R4s Start the Week, ‘hilarious, insightful and supremely intelligent writing’

‘What a writer.’ ALI SMITH
‘Endlessly inventive’ THE TIMES
‘Thoroughly pleasurable’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘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 Theodoros Apostolakis, the head of the Society of Lost Things. Fortunately, Apostolakis isn’t lost, but everything else is: ancient libraries, entire civilisations, priceless books and a beautiful 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.

Critic Reviews

Witty, ingenious . . . a writer of genuine elegance, intelligence and understated emotions.

Spectator

Critic Reviews

Kavenna’s philosophical rigour is leavened throughout by a generous sense of humour . . . a very pleasing read: an invitation to enjoy the formless delights of a universe “hanging out with itself”, where galaxies spiral in on themselves, and everything – “games, boxes, words, symbols, even the stars” – exists in a state of constant flux.

A. K. Blakemore, Guardian

Critic Reviews

[Kavenna] ramps up the comedy, interleaving erudite playfulness with characters who are as believable as they are eccentric . . . The Gordian knot of existence proves easy to resolve if you remember to think outside the box. And to have fun. This novel abounds with it.

Financial Times

Critic Reviews

Joanna Kavenna. What a writer.

Ali Smith

Critic Reviews

A brilliantly unpredictable novelist: whatever you think she might do next, she doesn’t.

Stuart Kelly, Guardian

Critic Reviews

One of the most brilliant and disconcerting British writers working today.

Spectator

JoannaKavenna

Joanna Kavenna’s novels include Inglorious, The Birth of Love, A Field Guide to Reality and Zed. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Esquire and Zoetrope, among other publications. She was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013., Joanna Kavenna is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction including…

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JoannaKavenna

Joanna Kavenna