The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Richard Flanagan’s 2014 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North won the Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is an examination of the consequences of war, regret, loneliness, adultery, and love. The book unfolds through brief chapters that span five parts and multiple decades. The experiences of the men in the WWII Japanese POW camp mirror those of Richard Flanagan’s father, who was himself a prisoner of war.

Although the novel has many characters—even minor characters occasionally receive their own chapter—it focuses on the story of Dorrigo Evans. Dorrigo is an Australian man who enlists in the war, and the Japanese soon take him as a prisoner of war. The narrative structure jumps back and forth between present and future, alternating between Dorrigo’s experiences in the camp and his struggles as a modern-day man who is grappling with fame. Dorrigo would survive the camp but then go on to become a famous surgeon and the subject of documentaries about his perseverance in the camp.

Dorrigo believes himself to be a fraud and a bad man. He is married to a woman named Ella but carries on constant affairs. Before leaving for the war, he meets a woman named Amy in a bookstore. Later he will learn that she is married to his uncle Keith. They have an affair for the summer before he leaves for the war, and it is the memory of Amy that sustains him through much of his time in the camps. While Dorrigo is in the camp, he receives a letter from Ella with a newspaper clipping. A gas explosion has destroyed the hotel his uncle owned, and Ella presumes Amy to be among the dead.

The suffering of the POWs is shown in great detail as they struggle to build the railroad. Flanagan also illustrates the experiences of the Japanese officers as they grapple with notions of duty and honor, even as they inflict torture and misery on the prisoners in service to the Empire. General Tenjin Nakamura often plays cards with Dorrigo, and the author uses their conversations about their respective roles in the war to show how differently the conflict was viewed through Western and Eastern perspectives.

Dorrigo survives the war and marries Ella but grows increasingly unhappy as his life continues. He forgets about Amy for years, but then crosses her path on a bridge in Sydney. He is not sure that she saw him, but he chooses not to speak to her. Shortly afterwards, a firestorm traps Ella and Dorrigo’s children in the town of New Fern. Dorrigo manages to rescue them by driving there in a borrowed car and driving them back out through a bonfire. When he hugs Ella afterwards, it is the only true moment of affection his children have ever seen him show their mother.

At the end of the novel, a car full of drunken teenagers hits Dorrigo. He will die in the hospital after three days. During those three days, his memories alternate between the women he has loved and the experiences in the camp. When he dies, he feels that his life is finally beginning. The last chapter of the book gives Dorrigo’s memory of a day when he was forced to choose 100 men to march to another camp, knowing that not one of them would survive the trek. Each of the men shook his hand after the selection. That night, after weeping over their departure, Dorrigo sees a crimson flower growing in the mud. It reminds him of the flower that Amy was wearing in her hair the day they met.