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
australia dried federal government native services slowly title
Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted.
beauty hand history
Look at the history of literature, and you find the history of beauty on the one hand and the IOUs on the other.
born coincides connected late life missed rarely
I was born too late and missed the dream of empire. Its shadow, the Commonwealth, coincides with my life but rarely connected with it.
kids six
I was one of six kids; my grandmother lived with us. We had an aunt who used to have nerves, and all her kids would turn up and live with us.
bald labouring looked menial struggling unskilled whatever work
You can be very successful but still struggling financially, and it looked like I'd have to take a year or two off and find whatever menial labouring work you can get as a middle-aged, unskilled bald man.
black culture great taken tribal unlike violence
Unlike some mainland black groups, Tasmanian Aborigines now have no traditional tribal culture left. It was taken from them with great violence and great rapidity.
cecil imperial
I went to study at Oxford University in the 1980s on an imperial scholarship instituted by Cecil Rhodes.
australian campaign exceeded history slogan success
The 2007 Labor campaign was the most presidential in Australian history, with a slogan - Kevin07 - exceeded in its banality only by its success.
great greatly honoured prizes
I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.
literary
I do not come out of a literary tradition.
tiny town
I come from a tiny mining town in the rainforest in an island at the end of the world. My grandparents were illiterate.
halt less named needs order people society spread turns
The idea of some people being less than people is poison to any society and needs to be named as such in order to halt its spread before it turns the soul of a society septic.
purpose horror imagine
The enslavement, humiliation, torture, and ultimate destruction of thousands upon thousands of human beings for a project for which there was ultimately no purpose is a horror that's very hard to imagine, far less understand.
writing form force
You have to attempt to find new forms that will force you to write freshly and better and hopefully more truthfully.