Richard Flanagan, prominent Tasmanian author, wins literary award Man Booker Prize 2014. The Tasmanian took out the 50,000-pound ($88,000) prize, which was announced at an awards ceremony in London.
Flanagan’s novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which tells the story of prisoners of war on the Burma railway, was one of six books short-listed for the international prize.
He becomes the first Tasmanian and fourth Australian to win the award. The judges described the book as a literary masterpiece. Flanagan said it was an extraordinary honour and he was astonished with his win.
“I was glad to be on the long list, I was shocked to be on the long list, I was delighted to be on the short list,” he said.
“If this story can mean something to people back home and they view their world with more pride and see more possibilities then I really am thrilled.”
“A writer’s life is to be defeated by ever greater things, it is a journey into humility and you do not expect these strokes of good fortune to come your way.
“You’re just grateful to be allowed to be back at the table the next day writing.
“I’m very grateful for this, it is one of the greatest honours that can be accorded in the world of literature but I didn’t expect it.”
His father died day Flanagan sent off the manuscript.
The novel was inspired by Flanagan’s late father, Archie Flanagan, who survived being a prisoner of war (POW) on the Thai-Burma railway.
“One of the roles of literature is to remind us that not only are we not alone but that to be fully human is also to be capable of the monstrous as well as the beautiful,” he said.
“I grew up, as did my five siblings, as the children of the death railway and we carried, in consequence, many incommunicable things and I realised that if I was to continue writing, I would have to write this book.
“I didn’t particularly want to write it but I understood it was the book I had to write in order to keep writing.
“I wrote five different novels over 12 years, each one was a failure and then I realised that my father was growing old and frail and for no logical reason it mattered to me to finish the book before he died.
“In the end my father trusted me – he trusted me to write a book which might be true and the last time we spoke I emailed the final manuscript off that morning … I told him it was done, and though the events are entirely unrelated he did pass away that evening.”
He said his father would be happy and proud.
“But beyond that it mattered to him that people remembered what happened, it mattered to him that people loved each other and it mattered to him that people never thought anybody was less than anybody else,” Flanagan said.
Asked whether he thought humanity had advanced from the darkness of world war, Flanagan remarked that the capacity for evil was part of the human condition.
“I think evil, murder, hate… these things are as deeply buried within us as love, kindness, goodness and perhaps they are far more closely entwined than we would care to admit,” he said.
“And the face of evil is never the other, it’s always our face.”
Flanagan revealed the prize money would make a welcome top-up to his bank balance.
Recently, he considered going to work in the mines for money to keep writing.
“A year and a half ago when I finished this book, I was contemplating going to get what work I could in the mines in far northern Australia,” he said.
“Things had come to such a pass with my writing, I’d spent so long on this book.
“This prize money means I can continue to write.”
The former Rhodes Scholar was born at Longford in Tasmania in 1961.
Man Booker prize winner Richard Flanagan talks to 936 ABC Hobart’s Leon Compton.
“I’m delighted to be bringing it home to Tassie,” he said. “In my speech I did speak of how I’d come from a little mining town in a rainforest on an island on the edge of the world and I never expected to end up in this grand hall in London being honoured as a writer.
“If this story can mean something to people back home and they view their world with more pride and see more possibilities then I really am thrilled.
“I hope everyone in Tasmania knows that is one of their stories that’s gone to the world and changed the world and I want them to take as much pride in it as they can take, that would be wonderful.”
His family in Tasmania has reflected on the prize, with his sister Jo saying their father’s stories were a big part of their childhood.
“We grew up with those stories and with the old diggers visiting [our] home. Our father would be really proud of him,” she said.
Brother Tim Flanagan said messages of congratulations started rolling in straight away.
“A number of old sons and daughters of prisoners of war have contacted me,” he said.
The other Australian winners in years past were Thomas Keneally in 1982 for Schindler’s Ark, Peter Carey for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001 and DBC Pierre for Vernon God Little in 2003.
Keneally had tweeted that Flanagan would win the prize and was delighted his prediction came true.
“I thought that if there was good sense in the jury, and you don’t always get that, that he was certainly going to win,” he said.
“This fellow is a serious writer but he’s easy to read; I don’t know how he does it.”
The book has struck a chord with readers in Australia, the UK and the US and Flanagan said earlier he regarded readers as the true test and the real judges.
As well as writing novels his essays have been published in the New York Times and his book, the Sound of One Hand Clapping, was made into a feature film.
(Internet)
