Richard Flanagan wins Man Booker prize

Australian author Richard Flanagan is the winner of The Man Booker Prize for 2014.

Richard has won for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which according to the chair of judges, AC Grayling, is “a remarkable love story as well as story about human suffering and comradeship”.

He continued “The two great themes from the origin of literature are love and war: this is a magnificent novel of love and war. Written in prose of extraordinary elegance and force, it bridges East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism.”

The novel is set in World War II, and revolves around the notorious Thai Burma Death Railway. The author’s father was a prisoner of the Japanese who survived the Railway and lived until 98. Ironically he died the day Richard finished the novel.

Richard is the third Australian to win the Man Booker; previous winners are Tom Kenneally for Schindler’s List (1982), and Peter Carey who won for Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and The True History of the Kelly Gang (2001).

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