The Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan

I picked up The Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan largely because it won the 2014 Man Booker Prize and I wanted something meaty. I went in with the preconceived notion that it was a story about Australian POWs in Burma during WWII – and that is certainly one way of selling it. But I was truly surprised by the sensuality of the love story that surrounds the story of one of the POWs. There was a tenderness to the novel that I was not expecting (and which, quite frankly, isn’t really my cup of tea). So while I did not entirely enjoy The Narrow Road To The Deep North, I can see why Flanagan won such a prestigious award for it.