The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. Pellucid, epic, and sincerely touching in its treatment of death, this is a powerful novel. In the despair of a Japanese POW cam on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncles young wife two years earlier. His novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Goulds Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting and The Narrow Road to the Deep North have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. Yet it is Dorrigo's Japanese adversary, Major Nakamura, Flanagan's most conflicted and fully realized character, whose view of the war and struggles with the Emperor's will and his own postwar fate comes to overshadow Dorrigo's story, especially in the novel's bracing second half. Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania in 1961. Richard Flanagans five previous novelsDeath of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, and Wantinghave received numerous honors and are published in forty-two countries.He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North.He lives in Tasmania. While Amy, with the rest of the world, believes him dead, Dorrigo's only respite comes from the friends he tries to keep healthy and sane, fellow sufferers such as Darky Gardiner, Lizard Brancussi, and Rooster MacNiece. Most of the novel recounts Dorrigo's experience as a POW in the Burmese jungle on the 'speedo,' horrific work sessions on the 'Death Railway' that leave most of his friends dead from dysentery, starvation, or violence.

Initially, it is related through the reminiscences of Dorrigo Evans, a 77-year-old surgeon raised in Tasmania whose life has been filtered through two catastrophic events: the illicit love affair he embarked on with Amy Mulvaney, his uncle's wife, as a young recruit in the Australian corps and his WWII capture by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. From bestselling Australian writer Flanagan (Gould's Book of Fish) comes a supple meditation on memory, trauma, and empathy that is also a sublime war novel.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan