Australian author Richard Flanagan has won the Man Booker Prize for his wartime novel "The Narrow Road to the Deep North". The Prize is equal to £50,000.
This novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North related with a love story as well as story about human suffering and comradeship. This is prize is announced on behalf of chair of the judges, AC Grayling. Flanagan's novel is set during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War Two. It was announced as the winner on Tuesday night at London's Guildhall. This was the first year that the Man Booker prize had been open to all authors writing in English, regardless of nationality. Some writers had expressed fears that the change in the rules could lead to dominance by US authors.
Flanagan, 53, was presented with his prize by The Duchess of Cornwall. Richard Flanagan: ''I never expected to stand here before you in this grand hall in London as a writer, being so honored'' "In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle," Flanagan said. "I just didn't expect to end up the chicken." The author's father, a Japanese prisoner of war who survived the Death Railway, died aged 98 the day the novel was finished.
Grayling said the judges reached a majority decision after some three hours of debate. "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 Narrow Road to the Deep North is Flanagan's sixth novel. Born in Tasmania, he is the third Australian to win the Booker. Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark won in 1982 while Peter Carey won for Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and The True History of the Kelly Gang (2001). It took Flanagan 12 years to get his novel right. "Other novels came and went as I continued to fail to write this one," he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. "I wrote five different versions of this book in order to find the final novel."
The story is set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and centers upon the experiences of surgeon Dorrigo Evans, who is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Grayling said: "The best and worst of judging books is when you come across one that kicks you so hard in the stomach like this that you can't pick up the next one in the pile for a couple of days. That's what happened in the case of this book."
About the Author RICHARD FLANAGAN
He was born in Tasmania in July 1961. Flanagan's previous novels, Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould's Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist and Wanting have been published in 26 countries. He directed a feature film version of The Sound Of One Hand Clapping (1998), which starred Kerry Fox. His father, who died the day Flanagan finished The Narrow Road to the Deep North, was a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. The book is dedicated "to prisoner san byaku san ju go" - a reference to his father's Japanese prison number, 335.
| Man Booker Prize shortlist 2014 | ||
| Author | Title | Nationality |
| Joshua Ferris | To Rise Again at a Decent Hour | American |
| Richard Flanagan | The Narrow Road to the Deep North | Australian |
| Karen Joy Fowler | We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves | American |
| Howard Jacobson | J | British |
| Neel Mukherjee | The Lives of Others | British |
| Ali Smith | How to be Both | British |
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