Australian novelist picks up award for story of prisoners and captors on Burma railway in The Narrow Road to the Deep North: The Guardian
The first Man Booker prize to allow American nominees was on Tuesday night won by an Australian, with Richard Flanagan triumphing for a “magnificent novel of love and war” that tells the harrowing stories of prisoners and captors on the Burma railway.
Flanagan won for The Narrow Road to the Deep North and followed Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey to become the third Australian to win the prize.
He instinctively hugged the Duchess of Cornwall as he received the award at a black tie dinner in London. “In Australia the Man Booker prize is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle,” he joked. “I just didn’t expect to end up the chicken.”
