The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is winner of The Man Booker Prize 2014!
“Daring … Captivating … Often unbearably powerful … The Narrow Road to the Deep North [will draw you] into dark contemplation the way only the most extraordinary books can. Nothing since Cormac McCarthy’s The Roadhas shaken me like this … This is a classic work of war fiction from a world-class writer … [There is] a series of blistering episodes you will never get out of your mind … The prose is as haunting and evocative as the haiku by 17th-century Japanese poet Basho that gives this novel its title. No other author draws us into ‘the strange, terrible neverendingness of human beings’ the way Flanagan does.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post
August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. His life is a daily struggle to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from pitiless beatings. Until he receives a letter that will change him forever.
Moving deftly from the POW camp to contemporary Australia, from the experiences of Dorrigo and his comrades to those of the Japanese guards, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of love, death, and family, exploring the many forms of good and evil, war and truth, guilt and transcendence, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan (b. 1961 in Tasmania) is considered the best Australian writer of his generation ("The Economist"). He is the author of six novels which have received numerous honors and have been published in twenty-six countries. He also authored numerous articles and essays devoted to the environmental and cultural heritage of his native island. His latest novel, "The Narrow Road to the Deepest North," inspired by the experience of his father in a Japanese POW camp during World War II, was awarded the "Man Booker Prize" for 2014.
