Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage,

unrivaled books and arts reviews, and so much more, all for just £12.

Not only that, but we'll also send you a £20 Amazon gift card absolutely free.

As a subscriber, you'll also be able to listen to all our other podcasts, ad-free.

Go to www.w.com.com.com.com

www.foughture to claim this offer now. Terms apply. Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

forgive my slightly croaky voice.

And my guest this week is the brilliant novelist Joanna Kavenna,

whose new book is called Seven, and unlike many novels,

it has a subtitle or How to play a game without rules.

Joanna, welcome. Thank you. This is a book that's, well, it's all about games. Can you maybe

start by telling us about the game at the centre of it, which gives it its title? Because as far as I can

tell, this is a game that doesn't

exist. No, it doesn't exist, although I suspect in some realm it does exist, and it's very much

drawn on loads and loads of games that I know. I mean, there's thousands of games through history.

They've been played for 5,000 years that we know. Obviously, it's an incredibly ancient form.

So I was really interested in a kind of mash-up of games I love. And it's, I'm a very, I'm a very

sort of bad, but enthusiastic player of two-player games as well. So it emerged from that

enthusiasm. And I created, I guess, a game which combines, so it's a square board or a box, but it's got this circular

board on it and you can play it in different ways. There are seven pieces per player. It's a two-player

game and I'm interested in that relationship between the two players. It's quite a close relationship,

...