tech
January 12, 2026
Seven by Joanna Kavenna review
With its cast of thinkers, gamers and artists, this romp across Europe explores our desire to define reality – even as it slips from our intellectual grasp
TL;DR
- Joanna Kavenna's seventh book, "Seven (Or, How to Play a Game Without Rules)", is an absurdist novel with elements of academic satire.
- The novel's first-person narrator, working as a research assistant in Oslo, becomes involved with "box philosophy," the study of categories and how humans organize reality.
- The narrator is sent to the Greek island of Hydra to meet Theódoros Apostolakis, a devotee of a fictitious board game called "Seven," who also keeps a "Catalogue of Lost Things."
- The story is a peripatetic journey across Europe, encountering thinkers, artists, and "incoherent rich people," all exploring the human desire to define and categorize reality.
- Kavenna's philosophical exploration is leavened by humor, with outrageous characters and absurd situations.
- The novel explores the limits of philosophy, contrasting abstract theories with the experience of the natural world.
- A symbolic controversy involving an AI platform in professional "Seven" play occurs as the narrator finds peace on an island.
- The novel suggests that elements like games, boxes, words, symbols, and stars exist in a state of constant flux.
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