Emma recommends... Seven - Joanna Kavenna

Emma says... This is a very strange but hugely enjoyable book! Packed full of big and weight ideas, historical, cultural, literary and philosophical references, all significantly lightened with spades of humour. An absurd caper across Europe, searching for lost things, with loads to think about, masses to enjoy, and full readerly satisfaction.

---

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.