Richard Flanagan has won the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction with his book ‘Question 7’.
“This book is about my father and my mother,” he says, “their love for each other and the way they used love to find meaning in a world they knew to otherwise be meaningless. I think everyone is confronted at a certain point with the knowledge that the universe is empty of meaning. So the question is: how do we go on? They found meaning through kindness and goodness to each other and to others. They practised that love and they fought for that love for decades. It ceased to be what I thought was an illusion, and became their hard-fought-for reality. It became a truth – it was really a form of magic, and they the magicians. I realised it was an immense achievement. They came from very poor backgrounds: they understood the hardness and harshness of this life, yet they found wonder within it everywhere.”
Flanagan has delayed accepting the fifty thousand pounds prize until he is able to sit down with Ballie Giffard to discuss his climate crisis concerns over the company’s involvement in fossil fuels.
Read Alex Clark’s full article at The Guardian (21st November 2024).