The Narrow Road to the Deep North

From the winner ofAustralia’s National Fiction Prize, author of the hugely acclaimed Gould’sBook of Fish, comes amagisterial, Rashomon-like novel of love and war that traces the life ofone man from World War II to the present.

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thailand–BurmaDeath Railway in 1943, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his loveaffair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. His life is a dailystruggle to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, frompitiless beatings—until he receives a letter that will change him forever.

Moving deftly from the POW camp to contemporary Australia,from the experiences of Dorrigo and his comrades to those of the Japaneseguards, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of death, love, and family, exploring the many forms of good and evil, war and truth, guilt andtranscendence, as one man comes of age and prospers, only to discover all that hehas lost.