Richard Flanagan Books

Is Tasmanian salmon one big lie? In a triumph of marketing, the Tasmanian salmon industry has for decades succeeded in presenting itself as world's best practice and its product as healthy and clean, grown in environmentally pristine conditions. What could be more appealing than the idea of Atlantic salmon sustainably harvested in some of the world's purest waters? But what are we eating when we eat Tasmanian salmon? Richard Flanagan's expose of the salmon farming industry in Tasmania is chilling. In the way that Rachel Carson took on the pesticide industry in her ground-breaking book Silent Spring, Flanagan tears open an industry that is as secretive as its practices are destructive and its product disturbing. From the burning forests of the Amazon to the petrochemicals you aren't told about to the endangered species being pushed to extinction you don't know about; from synthetically pink-dyed flesh to seal bombs . . . If you care about what you eat, if you care about the environment, this is a book you need to read. Toxic is set to become a landmark book of the twenty-first century.

WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014 In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. Hailed as a masterpiece, Richard Flanagan’s epic novel tells the unforgettable story of one man’s reckoning with the truth.

FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014In the winter of 1954, in a construction camp in the remote Tasmanian highlands, when Sonja Buloh was three years old and her father was drinking too much, her mother disappeared into a blizzard never to return.

THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014'S MAGNIFICENT FIRST NOVEL Beneath a waterfall on the Franklin, Aljaz Cosini, river guide, lies drowning. Beset by visions at once horrible and fabulous, he relives not just his own life but that of his family and forebears. In the rainforest waters that rush over him he sees those lives stripped bare of their surface realities, and finds a world where dreaming reasserts its power over thinking. As the river rises his visions grow more turbulent, and in the flood of the past Aljaz discovers the soul of his country.

The book explores the paradox of modern non-freedom, juxtaposing traditional images of oppression with contemporary consumerism. It critiques how the allure of technology and consumer goods, like iPads and iPhones, shapes perceptions of worth and happiness in the Western world. The narrative delves into the unsettling realities behind these products, including ethical concerns and the commodification of beauty, prompting readers to reconsider the true cost of their desires in a society increasingly defined by materialism.

In a world of perennial fire and growing extinctions, Anna's aged mother is dying--if her three children would just allow it. Condemned by their pity to living, subjected to increasingly desperate medical interventions, she instead turns her focus to her hospital window, through which she escapes into visions of horror and delight. When Anna's finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window. She begins to see that all around her others are similarly vanishing, yet no one else notices. All Anna can do is keep her mother alive. But the window keeps opening wider, taking Anna and the reader ever deeper into an eerily beautiful story of grief and possibility, of loss and love and orange-bellied parrots. Hailed on publication in Australia as Flanagan's greatest novel yet, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is a rising ember storm illuminating what remains to us when the inferno beckons: one part elegy, one part dream, one part hope

In "The Australian Booksellers' Association Book of the Year," Sonja Buloh returns to Tasmania 35 years after her mother vanished in a blizzard. She seeks to understand her father's struggles with alcoholism and their shared traumatic past. Their gradual reconnection reveals the mysteries of their family's history.

In 1828, before all living things were destroyed, William Buelow Gould, a convict in Van Dieman's Land, fell in love with a black woman and discovered, too late, that love is not safe.

"Goulds Buch der Fische" narrates the adventurous life of thief and forger William Buelow Gould. In the 19th century, he records his memories in a Tasmanian prison cell, illustrating them with detailed fish drawings. The book explores his exile, love for art, and his doomed affair with Sally Twopence, the warden's mistress.