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Richard Flanagan

    January 1, 1961

    Richard Flanagan's novels are deeply rooted in the rugged landscapes and complex history of Tasmania, Australia. He crafts compelling narratives that explore the intricacies of human experience against the backdrop of Australia's wild and often unforgiving natural settings. Flanagan's work is characterized by its profound engagement with themes of identity, memory, and the profound connection between people and the land. His distinctive voice and literary artistry mark him as a significant contemporary storyteller.

    Richard Flanagan
    Short Black 1
    Death of a River Guide
    The Sound of One Hand Clapping
    The Narrow Road to the Deep North
    LIVING SEA OF WAKING DREAMS SIGNED EDITN
    Toxic
    • 2024

      The Narrow Road to the Deep North

      Vintage War

      • 464 pages
      • 17 hours of reading

      Set against the harrowing backdrop of a Japanese POW camp during World War II, the narrative follows surgeon Dorrigo Evans as he grapples with the dualities of love and loss. Haunted by a past affair, he fights to save his men from the brutal realities of starvation and disease. A life-altering letter brings new revelations, forcing him to confront his sacrifices and the impact of war. This poignant tale, recognized with the Man Booker Prize, explores profound themes of love, death, and the human cost of conflict.

      The Narrow Road to the Deep North
    • 2024

      'Question 7 could be Richard Flanagan's greatest yet' Guardian 'A masterpiece' Mark Haddon This is a book about the choices we make and the chain reaction that follows . . . By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river, not knowing if he is to live or to die. Flanagan has created a love song to his island home and his parents and the terrible past that delivered him to that place. Through a hypnotic melding of dream, history, science, and memory, Question 7 shows how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves. 'I was fascinated, troubled, and enchanted by this strange and extraordinary work... I can think of nothing else quite like it' Sarah Perry 'Mighty in its rage and tenderness: his most momentous book yet' Laura Cumming 'Spectacular . . . It seems to me a book that will have an overwhelming effect on readers. It certainly did on me' Colm Tóibín

      Question 7
    • 2021

      Toxic

      • 240 pages
      • 9 hours of reading
      4.4(87)Add rating

      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.

      Toxic
    • 2021

      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

      The living sea of waking dreams
    • 2017

      Six weeks to write for your life... In this blistering story of a ghostwriter haunted by his demonic subject, the Man Booker Prize winner turns to lies, crime and literature with devastating effect A young and penniless writer, Kif Kehlmann, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl proposes a deal: $10,000 for Kehlmann to ghostwrite his memoir in six weeks. Kehlmann accepts but begins to fear that he is being corrupted by Heidl. As the deadline draws closer, he becomes ever more unsure if he is ghostwriting a memoir, or if Heidl is rewriting him-his life, his future. Everything that was certain grows uncertain as he begins to wonder: who is Siegfried Heidl-and who is Kif Kehlmann? By turns compelling, comic and chilling, First Person is a haunting journey into the heart of our age.

      First Person
    • 2015

      Short Black 1

      The Australian Disease: On the Decline of Love and the Rise of Non-Freedom

      • 80 pages
      • 3 hours of reading
      3.8(34)Add rating

      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.

      Short Black 1
    • 2014

      The Narrow Road to the Deep North

      • 464 pages
      • 17 hours of reading
      4.1(1219)Add rating

      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.

      The Narrow Road to the Deep North
    • 2010

      Wanting. Mathinna, englische Ausgabe.

      • 252 pages
      • 9 hours of reading
      3.2(59)Add rating

      Linking apparently unrelated events and tragedies from the 19th century, 'Wanting' transforms into a remarkable meditation on the ways in which desire - and its denial - shape our lives.

      Wanting. Mathinna, englische Ausgabe.
    • 2010

      FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014Mathinna, an Aboriginal girl from Van Diemen's Land, is adopted by nineteenth-century explorer, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane.

      Wanting