Richard Flanagan is the 2014 winner of the Man Booker Prize for his novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” The award, worth about $85,000, was announced Tuesday at a gala ceremony in London and broadcast by the BBC.
Flanagan, the author of a half-dozen books, is the third Australian and first novelist born in Tasmania to win the prize.
“The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” published in August in the U.S., was inspired by his father’s experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II, when he was forced to help build a railway between Burma and Thailand. His father, in his 90s, died as he completed the novel.
This was the first year that Americans had been included in the competition. Two American novelists made the shortlist: Karen Joy Fowler for her novel “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves” and Joshua Ferris for “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.”
