The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Dorrigo Evans is a surgeon who in old age has become a celebrated war veteran, though privately he is troubled by his own failings. Flashbacks return to his early life in rural Tasmania and to his love affair with Amy, the young wife of his uncle. After the affair he joins the Australian Imperial Force, is captured and is sent to labour on the Burma Railway, where he is made leader of his fellow prisoners and struggles to protect them from disease, malnutrition and violence. It is Richard Flanagan’s sixth novel, published in 2013.