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Book · 2013
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
An Australian army surgeon is captured by Japanese forces and struggles to keep his fellow prisoners alive while building the Thai-Burma Railway during World War II. Decades later, celebrated as a war hero, he remains consumed by memories of camp atrocities and a passionate pre-war affair with his uncle's wife.
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Flanagan's novel is a grand examination of what it is to be a good man and a bad man in the one flesh and, above all, of how hard it is to live after survival... One would notice, if not swept along by the tale, that the allocation of time to characters, the certainty of the narration, the confidence to pause and then lunge on, to play with time, are all bravura accomplishments. We don't notice, though. Flanagan is too good to let us.
Thomas Keneally on The Guardian The central event of the novel is an extended atrocity on the Burma death railway as it is being constructed by hundreds of thousands of slaves, including 13,000 Australians... Flanagan wants nobody to be under any illusions about what went on, and in this he succeeds brilliantly. Evans is a flawed hero... conflicted by the guilt of his adultery but also a man who lives through this experience in Burma to become a hero. But for all its overstriving, this is a book you should read.
Justin Cartwright on The Guardian A story that is both harrowing and deeply humanist, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has been billed as Flanagan's most personal work, inspired by his father's stories of his POW experience. It is also perhaps his most ambitious, a deeply felt attempt to come to terms with the almost unimaginable horror of the Death Railway.
Daniel Herborn on The Sydney Morning Herald
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