Read our August Monthly Spotlight: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
We revisit the Booker-winning novel, 10 years after it won the prize. Read an exclusive interview, explore an extract and reading guide, and win a bundle of books by the author
This August, we’d love you to join us in reading (or re-reading) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, which was selected as this month’s Monthly Spotlight book by members of The Booker Prize Book Club, our official Facebook Group.
The novel, which won the Booker Prize in 2014, is an epic love story set against the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway during the Second World War. Surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. As he struggles to save the men under his command from starvation, cholera and beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
The Narrow Road was Flanagan’s sixth novel, and was partly inspired by his father’s time as a Japanese prisoner of war on the Burma Railway; it took him over a decade to write. ‘The struggle was to create a story that was not our father’s, and for that I needed a central character utterly unlike our father,’ Flanagan said, in an exclusive interview with the Booker Prizes. ‘Walking that line was why it took me 12 years to write and I did not know when done if I had succeeded or failed.’
For more insights into Flanagan’s creative process, his inspirations and his favourite books, read his full interview on our Monthly Spotlight page. There, you can also explore an extract from the novel as well as our comprehensive reading guide. Plus, you can enter our competition to win a bundle of Flanagan’s books, including his latest work, Question 7.
Don’t forget to let us know what you think in the comments below, or join in the conversation over on our social channels. Happy reading!
Richard Flanagan interview: Winning the Booker was ‘a catastrophe of good fortune’
Ten years since he won the Booker Prize, the author reflects on the responsibility he felt writing The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
‘As a novelist I have always felt you must be free. You cannot be bound to or concerned by what those close to you think, with their feelings or concerns, or it will cripple the necessary freedom you need to write something that is true. And yet, I must admit I felt a great responsibility to both those who died such terrible, wretched deaths on the Death Railway and those who survived; to not get it wrong as so many novels and films have got it wrong. It was clear to me that it was very easy to write a bad book on the subject and very hard to write a good book.’
Win a bundle of Richard Flanagan novels and a Booker Prize tote bag
To celebrate our Monthly Spotlight for August, we are giving you the chance to win a selection of books by Richard Flanagan and a limited-edition Booker Prize tote bag. The selection includes The Narrow Road to the Deep North, as well as The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Death of a River Guide, and Flanagan’s latest book, Question 7, which the Guardian described as ‘an unclassifiable novel-cum-memoir' and as Flanagan’s ‘finest work’.
This competition is open to readers anywhere in the world. Good luck!
Read an extract from The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Moving deftly from a Japanese POW camp to present-day Australia, from the experiences of Dorrigo Evans and his fellow prisoners to those of the Japanese guards, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
Discover our reading guide to the novel
Whether you’re new to The Narrow Road to the Deep North or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, discover more in our comprehensive guide which includes a synopsis, character summaries, critics’ comments and a range of discussion points for book clubs.
Have you read The Narrow Road to the Deep North, or are you joining us in reading the novel this month? If so, we’d love to hear what you think in the comments below
Richard is a national treasure here in Australia. His work also, on revealing the environmental devastation caused by over stocked salmon farms in his native Tasmania is as vital as it is shocking. Government collusion and inaction are rife. His latest book Question 7, is genre defying and brilliant.
Great