The Flanagan effect: Tasmanian literature in the limelight

The announcement last October that Richard Flanagan had won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North placed the Australian writer in an international spotlight; it also brought Tasmanian literature out of the shadows.

Flanagan, the author of five earlier novels, including Gould’s Book of Fish (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, 2002) and Wanting (winner of the Tasmanian Book Prize, 2011), is one of Australia’s leading novelists.

With its imprimatur from the Man Booker judges, his latest book, if entered, will surely be a hot favourite for the major prize in his home state’s Premier’s Literary Prizes at the end of 2015.