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 Flanagan, 53, won the prestigious 50,000-pound ($79,530)
prize for his novel "The Narrow Road to the Deep North", set
during the building of the Thailand-Burma "Death Railway" in
World War Two.
"I'm not a wealthy man so in essence this means I can continue
to write," Flanagan, sipping champagne, told reporters after
winning the prize at a ceremony in London.
"A year and a half ago when I finished this book I was
contemplating going to get what work I could in a mine in far
northern Australia because things had come to such a pass with
my writing, I had spent so long on this book," he said.
The book, while not the story of his father, was in some ways a
tribute to him. He had been a POW who worked on the infamous
railway that claimed the lives of thousands due to the harsh
jungle conditions and treatment.
"I grew up as did my five siblings as children of the 'Death
Railway'...I realized at a certain point if I was to continue
writing I would have to write this book," Flanagan said.
His father died at age 98, the day Flanagan finished "The Narrow
Road to the Deep North." He said he had telephoned his father
earlier that day to tell him he had sent off the completed
manuscript.
Flanagan added that he did not share the view that the novel was
dying because, he said, "I think it is one of the great
inventions of the human spirit ... and it is one we need because
it allows an individual to speak a truth, their truth, without
power and money."
Flanagan's sixth novel beat out what jury chairman Anthony
Grayling said was a strong short list of six books that for the
first time, under a rule change, included works by two
Americans, giving rise to fears beforehand that the British
prize might come to be dominated by American writers.
Grayling said those fears should now be put to rest and went on
to say of the winner that it was rare to run across a book that
"hits you so hard in the stomach, like this, that you can't pick
up the next one in the pile for a couple of days".
"It's an absolutely superb novel, really outstanding. It's a
great work of literature," Grayling said in a briefing before
the award was made public.
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Flanagan is ranked among Australia's finest novelists and also
worked as a writer with director Baz Luhrmann on the 2008 film
"Australia".
Grayling, a philosopher, said Flanagan was chosen by consensus of
the six-person judging panel. A spokeswoman for the public relations
firm representing the prize clarified that Grayling had at one point
used his tie-breaker vote "to move the discussion forward,"
indicating the choice was not unanimous.
The other books on the short list were "We Are All Completely Beside
Ourselves" by Karen Jay Fowler (American), "To Rise Again at a
Decent Hour" by Joshua Ferris (American), "J" by Howard Jacobson
(British), "The Lives of Others" by Neel Mukherjee (British) and
"How to be Both" by Ali Smith (British).
In "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," Flanagan takes up the story
of Allied prisoners of war used as forced labor by the Japanese to
build the notorious railway line. His protagonist is Dorrigo Evans,
a doctor and a soldier in the Australian army who is taken prisoner
on Java, presumably in 1942.
In the despair of a Japanese POW camp, Evans is haunted by his love
affair with his young uncle's wife two years earlier. While
struggling to save the men under his command from cholera and
beatings, he receives a letter that changes his life forever.
Named after a famous Japanese book by the haiku poet Basho, Grayling
said the novel succeeds in showing there are "extra dimensions" to
the relationships between the POWs and their guards.
"It's not really a war novel; it's not about people shooting and
bombs going off, and so on. It's much more about the people and
their relationships," he said.
(1 US dollar = 0.6287 British pound)
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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