Flanagan, Richard (1961-…), an Australian novelist and nonfiction writer, won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his historical novel Narrow Road to the Deep North (2014). The award (now called the Booker Prize) is the United Kingdom’s best-known literary award. Flanagan was the third Australian writer to receive the prestigious award, after Thomas Keneally in 1982 and Peter Carey in 1988 and 2001.
Narrow Road to the Deep North is set during World War II (1939-1945). The novel powerfully portrays the brutality and many deaths endured by Australian prisoners of war forced to build a railway for the Japanese army in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1943. Flanagan drew on the experiences of his father in writing the novel.
Flanagan’s previous novels have mostly been set in his home state of Tasmania, and have aimed at portraying Tasmania with honesty and love. Flanagan gained critical praise and a South Australian literary award for his first novel, Death of a River Guide (1994). The novel tells the story of a man responsible for guiding tourists in the Tasmanian wilderness. He relives his life and the lives of his family and ancestors as he drowns in a river. The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997) deals with the experiences of migrant workers in Tasmania in the 1950’s. Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001) is based on pictures of fish painted by a convict artist, William Buelow Gould. The Unknown Terrorist (2006) is a novel set in modern Sydney. In First Person (2018), Flanagan explores the complex relationship between a writer and the notorious con man whose memoir he has been hired to write. The work examines the nature of truth while satirizing the Australian publishing industry. In The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (2020), a woman and her brothers seek treatment for their dying mother. Meanwhile, fires burn the land, climate change causes animals to die, and the woman begins to see parts of her own body quietly disappear.
Flanagan won multiple prizes for his fifth novel, Wanting (2008). The novel links English author Charles Dickens and an Aboriginal orphan adopted by Lady Franklin, the wife of Sir John Franklin, the colonial governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Van Diemen’s Land is the earlier name for Tasmania. The woman adopts the young girl as an experiment, believing that civilization consists of learning to suppress desire. The novel questions this idea, highlighting Dickens’s desire for a young woman and the cannibalism that occurred when Franklin and his crew became stuck in the Arctic ice while searching for the Northwest Passage.
Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania. He left school at the age of 16 to work as a laborer in the bush (Australia’s remote countryside) but later returned to school. He graduated from the University of Tasmania with a B.A. degree in 1983 and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in England.
Flanagan began his writing career with several nonfiction books dealing with politics and the environment. A Terrible Beauty—History of the Gordon River Country (1985) vividly portrays the Tasmanian wilderness. The Rest of the World Is Watching is a history of the Tasmanian Green Movement and its battles for the environment. On the Mountain (1996) presents a natural history of Mount Wellington, near the Tasmanian capital of Hobart. A collection of Flanagan’s nonfiction was published in 2011 as And What Do You Do, Mr. Gable?
Flanagan directed the motion picture adaptation of One Hand Clapping, which was released in 1998. He was one of the scriptwriters for the motion picture Australia (2008), directed by Baz Luhrmann.
