Some years, very good books win the Man Booker Prize but this year a masterpiece has won it * A.C. Grayling, Chair of Judges, Man Booker Prize 2014 *
A novel of
extraordinary power, deftly told and hugely affecting.
A classic in the making... Masterful * Observer *
Devastatingly beautiful * Sunday Times *
Utterly convincing...
A grand examination of what it is to be a good man and a bad man in the one flesh, and, above all, of how it is to live after survival... To say Flanagan creates a rich tapestry is to overly praise tapestries -- Thomas Keneally * Guardian *
Elegantly wrought, measured and without an ounce of melodrama, Flanagan's novel is nothing short of a
masterpiece * Financial Times *
Considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation... A journey of loss and discovery, this is a novel replete with scenes that stay with the reader long after the final page... Never sentimental or overwritten, Flanagan explores human reactions, large and small...
The book Mr Flanagan was born to write * The Economist *
An absolutely almighty book and unfailingly beautifully written -- Neel Mukherjee
An
unforgettable story of men at war... Flanagan's prose is richly innovative and captures perfectly the Australian demotic... He evokes Evans' affair with Amy, and his subsequent soulless wanderings, with an intensity and beauty that is as poetic as the classical Japanese literature that peppers this novel -- Melissa Katsoulis * The Times *
Flanagan's novel [has] grace and unfathomability... Flanagan's writing courses like a river, sometimes black with mud, sludge and corpses, sometimes bright with moonlight...
The stories of these casualties of fate catch at the soul -- Catherine Taylor * Sunday Telegraph *
Powerful, often brutal love story... His feel for language, history's persistent undercurrent and subtle detail sets his fiction apart. There isn't a false note in this book. He can evoke emotion without a trace of sentimentality or bathos...
One of the finest novels published in English this year -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
His quiet, unrelenting style is often
unbearably powerful... A classic work of war fiction from a world-class writer -- Ron Charles * Washington Post *
Flanagan is an
outstanding writer. A beauty clings to the underneath of his sentences, even when he is describing hell on earth -- Claire Alfree * Metro *
Nothing could have prepared us for this immense achievement... The Narrow Road to the Deep North is beyond comparison... Intensely moving * The Australian *
I would be very happy if this won the Booker -- Amanda Craig * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
A masterly novel... A tour de force... the love story was beautiful
-- Viv Groskop * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
