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Hello and welcome to The Spectators Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of the

Spectator. My guest this week is the book

prize-winning novelist Richard Flanagan, whose new book is not a novel or not quite a novel,

but a memoir of sorts. It's called Question 7. And Richard, that question of how you, how you

categorise this book, I mean, maybe that's unimportant, but can you talk a bit about how it arrived?

I know Alan Garner said that a book comes for him when you get two separate things coming together

that don't seem to fit and he finds a way where they kind of cross over and he's got the crosshairs for a new book.

And there's a lot in this book that crosses over.

Well, I guess I used to enrage my publisher in Australia, Nikki Krista,

because I would constantly refer to it as a novel.

And yet it contains aspects of memoir and history that clearly are not fiction,

which is as much as it was possible I seek to represent accurately.

But I write journalism sometimes, and I think journalism is always a journey outwards,

and you report as accurately as you can on whatever it is you see and touch and feel.

And to the extent you offer opinions, you make it very clear thus separate of what you've

witnessed.

And a novel for me is a journey inwards into your own soul.

And a novel asks questions, but it doesn't propose answers.

...