Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan
Richard Miller Flanaganis an Australian novelist from Tasmania. "Considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist, each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honours. He also has written and directed feature films. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryAustralia
centre coming gift great knowing less life perhaps
Perhaps the virtue of coming from a place like Tasmania is that you had the great gift of knowing that you were not the centre of things, yet life was no less where you were.
europeans history struck
I was struck by the way Europeans see history as something neatly linear. For me, it's not that; it's not some kind of straight railway.
dies discover eternity great love moment seek stories truth
Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.
great people shakespeare
Shakespeare was completely fictionalising the people who were then the great celebrities of English.
began holy since watched
Since woodchipping began 32 years ago, Tasmanians have watched as one extraordinary place after another has been sacrificed. Beautiful places, holy places, lost not only to them, but forever.
love
Of all the love stories ever published, I have - realistically - read very few.
ancestors came food van
My ancestors came from Co Roscommon, transported to Van Diemen's Land for stealing food.
built death japanese million prisoner quarter slave survivor war
My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died.
talked unusually
My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way.
family words
My father was the first to read in his family, and he said to me that words were the first beautiful thing he ever knew.
discussion literary prizes
Generally, literary prizes are significant not for who the winner is but the discussion they create around books.
terrifying
Companies that are terrifying to a writer are companies like Amazon.
act filial
As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.
man pays unskilled work
An unskilled middle-aged man can work in the mines, and it pays well.