Flanagan's book is a 'magnificent novel of love and war'
Hindustan Times | ByBron Sibree
Apr 07, 2015 06:11 PM IST
It took Richard Flanagan 12 years to write his Man Booker Prize-winning book about a prisoner of war on the Death Railway.
Australian novelist Richard Flanagan has always known the words san byaku san ju go, which are the Japanese words for the number 335, his father’s number as a Japanese Prisoner of War (POW). "I’ve never not known them," says Flanagan, who famously inscribed his The Narrow Road to the Deep North with the words ‘For prisoner san byaku san ju go (335)’.