9 /10 1 Votes
5/5 The Telegraph Language English ISBN 978-1741666700 OCLC 864700580 Awards Booker Prize | 4/5 Goodreads Country Australia Media type Print, e-book Originally published 23 September 2013 Publisher Random House Genre Fiction novel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Pages 352 pp. (hardcover edition) Similar A Brief History of Seven Kil, Gould's Book of Fish, The Luminaries, The Sound of One Hand Cla, Death of a River Guide | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is the sixth novel by Richard Flanagan. It received critical acclaim on its release, and won the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
Contents
Overview
The book tells the story of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by memories of a love affair with his uncle's wife and of his subsequent experiences as a prisoner of war. Post-war, he finds his growing celebrity as a war hero at odds with his sense of his own failings and guilt.
Taking its title from 17th century haiku poet Matsuo BashÅ's famous haibun, Oku no Hosomichi, best known in English as The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the novel is epic in form and chronicles an Australian century, with one horrific day at its heart on the Burma Railway in August 1943. As that day builds to its climax, the novel grows to encompass the post war lives of Japanese and Korean prison guards as well as Australian Far East Prisoners of War. The novel deals both with the effects of war and the many forms of love.
Background
Flanagan has described, in The Sydney Morning Herald, how his father's experience of being a Japanese POW influenced him to write the book.