Richard Flanagan’s father was a prisoner in Burma and his son is on record saying that his book is a tribute to him. Dorrigo Evans, as a colonel and a surgeon, is the acknowledged leader of the Australian prisoners after the fall of Singapore. The central event of the novel is an extended atrocity on the Burma death railway as it is being constructed by hundreds of thousands of slaves, including 13,000 Australians. There was a weariness to the dim light.” There is a lot of this kind of thing. Even describing this clapped-out hotel, Flanagan is reluctant to take his foot off the pedal the air is on some mission of its own: “Dying air dozed in the King of Cornwall’s corridors. He is married to Ella, but when his regiment is shipped out he is deep in adultery with Amy, the lovely wife of a hotel keeper. Starting with his old age, five stages in the life and loves of the main character, Dorrigo Evans, are interwoven. What does this mean? Is it to do with creation? Is it to do with an Australian upbringing? Is “like entering the sea and returning to the beach” an Aussie idea of epiphany, taking place on a beach and bearing some deep significance? The opening line, “Why at the beginning of things is there always light?”, is one of the latter. There are moments of great beauty but also moments of great bathos. It is perhaps too ambitious, although ambition is not a sin in my book.

L ast year’s Booker prize-winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is extraordinarily ambitious.

Deep road to the narrow north