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Seven: 'A very pleasing read.' A K Blakemore
'What a writer.' ALI SMITH
'One of the most brilliant British writers working today.' Spectator
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 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 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.
'One of the most brilliant British writers working today.' Spectator
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 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 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.
280 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 15, 2026
10 people are currently reading
373 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Kavenna
20 books158 followersJoanna Kavenna is a prize-winning British novelist and travel writer.
Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.
Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.
She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.
Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.
Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.
Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.
She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.
Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 26, 2026
Part comedy, part thriller. She had be at box philosophy. It’s also delightfully European with echoes of Hesse and Fowles, but with a lot more wit and fun.
January 20, 2026
A novel of ideas, centred around a board game with a hidden history that goes all the way back to the ancient Mediterranean; a tragi-comic journey around Europe's bloody history and its hopeful if confused present.
At one point I noted "Is this 'The Magus' if the Fowles novel wasn't so massively up itself?" Well, maybe it is, with its charismatic Greek characters, labyrinths of many kinds, dark intimations of WW2 atrocities, and mind games (it's all about games, or all about the game).
I loved how European it was, moving between Greece and Scandinavia, France and Spain; the USA barely exists. Clouds on the horizon are an incoming AI that plays the titular game better than any human, but can it be beaten? And is that the real issue? Kasparov beaten by Deep Blue just affirmed that he was the best human player.
I also liked the narrator character and that as far as I could tell we never find out whether they're male or female. I'm tending towards female but I can imagine being them.
The game itself is likely based on the ancient Egyptian game of Mehen, and at the back of my mind was also Hesse's world-defining Glass Bead Game. In Seven's world the game gets outside the box and becomes a metaphor (which means 'transport,' or 'journey' and it's certainly that) for the universe itself.
At one point I noted "Is this 'The Magus' if the Fowles novel wasn't so massively up itself?" Well, maybe it is, with its charismatic Greek characters, labyrinths of many kinds, dark intimations of WW2 atrocities, and mind games (it's all about games, or all about the game).
I loved how European it was, moving between Greece and Scandinavia, France and Spain; the USA barely exists. Clouds on the horizon are an incoming AI that plays the titular game better than any human, but can it be beaten? And is that the real issue? Kasparov beaten by Deep Blue just affirmed that he was the best human player.
I also liked the narrator character and that as far as I could tell we never find out whether they're male or female. I'm tending towards female but I can imagine being them.
The game itself is likely based on the ancient Egyptian game of Mehen, and at the back of my mind was also Hesse's world-defining Glass Bead Game. In Seven's world the game gets outside the box and becomes a metaphor (which means 'transport,' or 'journey' and it's certainly that) for the universe itself.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews