The Narrow Road to the Deep North

As the winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, I'd heard good things about this book and decided to listen to it on Audio. I would have preferred reading it rather than listening to it because it's descriptive, and you need to pay close attention to get the full impact of the story. With that said, the beginning of the book is slow and challenging to get through, but once I was a few chapters in, I had to finish it. It's a compelling story based on the building of the Burma Death Railway in 1943 by a group of Australian soldiers who were Japanese POWs. The author's father was one of the POWs in the camp.

Dorrigo Evans is the complicated protagonist. He's a flawed man with many demons, which the author skillfully reveals throughout the story. As a surgeon, Evans has the insurmountable task of protecting and caring for the POWs in deplorable conditions. At times, it was hard to listen to because of the vivid descriptions of the brutality put upon the soldiers by their twisted captors. The torment these men were forced to endure was unbearable. There is much to talk about and examine in this book. It stays with you for quite a while, and I couldn't stop thinking about it after it ended.

Accolades: National Bestseller - Man Booker Prize Winner

Available now on Prime Video: Justin Kurzel's highly anticipated series based on this Booker Prize-winning novel by Richard Flanagan; starring Jacob Elordi, Ciarán Hinds, Odessa Young, Olivia DeJonge, and Simon Baker.

“Magnificent.” — The New York Times Book Review
“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” — Financial Times

August, 1943: Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. His life, in a brutal Japanese POW camp on the Thai–Burma Death Railway, is a daily struggle to save the men under his command—until he receives a letter that will change him forever.

A savagely beautiful novel about the many forms of good and evil, of truth and transcendence, as one man comes of age and prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.

1. What is the significance of the title The Narrow Road to the Deep North? Why might Flanagan echo Basho's travelogue?

2. How does the novel's structure underscore themes of time and memory and allow multiple points of view?

3. How do the book's images and language shape our response to characters and themes? Where does symbolism appear?

4. The POWs are forced to build a railway for the emperor. What does the Line represent? How do notions of “progress” complicate both sides?

5. Which characters see themselves as “good men”? How does the book blur right/wrong or good/evil?

6. Consider the dual nature of man—poet vs. animal; public vs. private self. Can one side prevail by choice?

7. “A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.” Is it better to remember and speak or remain silent? Cite examples.

8. After the war, how does Nakamura judge his past? Do others undertake similar self-examination?

9. What is a hero in this novel? Are leaders born or made by circumstance?

10. Does the book give form to horror or resist it? How do views of death and suffering differ among characters?

11. Dorrigo and Amy: why the attraction, and could their obstacles be overcome? Is love public?

12. Which forms of love (duty, romance, friendship, devotion, annihilation) prevail?

13. Where do we see faith and faithlessness, and why?

14. Why weave poetry (Basho, Issa, Tennyson) into the text? How does literary love shape characters?

15. Why does Dorrigo marry Ella? What does their relationship suggest about family and love?

16. Keith and Ella both lie. Why, and with what consequences?

17. What does the novel say about war's aftermath for POWs and Japanese soldiers? What changes at home?

18. The recurring image of a church hall flooded with light—hope or contrast?

19. Significance of Charon's circle death poem at start and end?

20. Why end with a book whose final pages are torn out?

Many of the characters provide an excellent vehicle for discussion. They are complex and worthy of close examination. The hardships of war illuminate the strength of the human spirit, the struggle between good and evil, and the will to survive.