Bookworm
Richard Flanagan: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Flanagan’s Booker-nominated novel, titled after a travelogue written by 17 th century Japanese poet Basho, follows the building of the Burma-Siam Railway during WWII.
By Michael Silverblatt • • 28m ListenRichard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-nominated The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Knopf) follows the building of the Burma-Siam Railway under the Japanese during WWII. The number of people who died in the process, Flanagan notes, exceeds the number of words filling the pages of his novel. His father was one of the survivors. Literature is amoral, he says. It took him twelve years to find the proper form for his novel (he discarded five versions along the way): his solution is a love-story that borrows the title of a travelogue by 17th century Japanese poet Basho.
Read an of The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
