Question 7 is a very difficult book to sum up. In simple terms, it’s a memoir, allowing Flanagan to dig deeper into themes he has explored in some of his novels, such as his relationship with his father (whose experiences on the Burmese Death Railway in WW2 were fictionalised as part of The Narrow Road…) and a near-death experience while kayaking as a young man (which informed his debut). But it’s also much broader than that.

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (to give it its full title) centres on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. The fire ravaged the hub of Canada’s oil industry, in remote Alberta, destroying thousands of homes and buildings and driving 90,000 people to evacuate in a single afternoon. This story is told in depth, using extensive testimonies and analysis of contemporary sources from residents, journalists, oil workers and journalists to piece together an almost minute-by-minute narrative of the development of a fire of never-before-seen magnitude. Around this story, though, Vaillant includes lengthy digressions - some necessary and illuminating, others more tangential but always interesting