Special interview: Richard Flanagan’s exploration of history, family and human interconnection in ‘Question 7’

MPR News with Angela Davis

Author Richard Flanagan recently completed a remarkable literary double: already a Booker Prize winner for his novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” he just won this year’s prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for his latest book “Question 7.”

It’s an audacious memoir, lyrical examination of the interconnections of history and family. He considers how a famed author’s illicit kiss with a woman who was not his wife may have led to the creation of the atomic bomb, and then in turn resulted in Flanagan’s own birth.

The Baillie Gifford Prizes chief judge described the book as “an intricately woven exploration of the chains of consequence that frame a life.”

Speaking recently from his home in Hobart, Tasmania, Flanagan told MPR News senior editor Euan Kerr the book arose from the disconnection of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.