The Narrow Road to the Deep North

"Winner"

"I put this on the list because I thought it’d be good to have something fictional. I’ve read quite a lot of novels based around the war in the Far East and this one is by far the most realistic. I think my father would have said, ‘This is what it was like.’ But it’s very graphic. It was televised recently, and many of my friends said they couldn’t watch it because it was so unpleasant. The book won the Booker Prize. It is an interesting book, a compelling read, combining the horrors of working on the railway with a love story—an unusual combination. Yes, his father was a doctor, which is why it resonated with me. It’s set in three time zones: the carefree period before the war, the horrors of the prison camp, and then, a section well after the war, when he was a celebrated war hero, and has been asked to promote a fellow POW’s book of war sketches As an old man he is tormented by memories of the past, and these shape the novel. When I read it, it was the first time I’d read a book set in this period where I thought, ‘This is by somebody who knows what it was really like.’ Yes, I did. A friend who read it did not like the frequent time shifts, but that didn’t worry me. I thought Flanagan treated a difficult subject in a thoughtful way. He never forgets it and he still has nightmares about the horrific events he witnessed. As far as I know, my father never did. Obviously, that’s something I couldn’t know for sure, but Dad didn’t seem to be that sort of person. In the book, the doctor, as he gets older, gets very difficult, and people don’t really understand why. No, I can’t say that it did. I think you’re very lucky if you can compartmentalize your life and say, ‘This is the past. It’s not going to define me. I’m just going to get on with it.’ Dad did say to me that he had wondered if he would get out, and whether he would ever have a family. They actually thought they might all be impotent from the diet. So the fact that he not only had children, but grandchildren, and then five great grandchildren before he died… I try very hard and I like to think I have. I’m definitely a glass-half-full person."