---
product_id: 51281963
title: "The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage International)"
price: "€ 29.74"
currency: EUR
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reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.fi/products/51281963-the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-vintage-international
store_origin: FI
region: Finland
---

# The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage International)

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## Description

Buy The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage International) by Flanagan, Richard from desertcart's Fiction Books Store. Everyday low prices on a huge range of new releases and classic fiction.

Review: A tangle of despair, degradation, confusion, certainty, beauty, horror and meaning - This is a book which at times I struggled with - a hard book, but for all the right reasons, as it is confrontational, shakes the reader awake, out of complacency and denial I read this book at times as if grasping at mist. It is `everything' filled both with a sense of the utter, pointless indifference and suffering of existence and the flips, almost on a knife edge, into `peak experience' super reality, deep meaning, which vanishes as we grasp at recognising it. A book which leaves the reader (well this reader) all shook up, spread-eagled and exhausted by the whole complex STUFF of living, wondering at times whether they can bear to continue reading - or bear to stop reading. If you think `what on earth is this reviewer going on about' - well, in part that IS what the book is like, as it follows the story, flipping back and forth over a period of some fifty years, in the life of Dorrigo Evans, a Tasmanian, an Army doctor, caught up in World War 2, captured by the Japanese, and a POW involved in the brutal building of the Burma railway for the glory of Japan The structure of the novel flips over and over between Dorrigo in his 70s, the young Dorrigo, in his 20's, recently enlisted, undergoing training in Australia, then, slightly later, that intolerable, impossible experience as a POW. The `old' Dorrigo of course is at the same time those younger versions, in the way we are always living our present lives backwards, since the place we are always contains the places we have been. He, like all of us, tries to find the story which explains him to himself. This book is certainly not for the faint-hearted, or indeed those with weak stomachs. There are scorching descriptions of atrocities, the terrible effects of starvation and disease, and the implacable brutality our species can visit upon each other - and, indeed upon anything at all. What Flanagan achieves however is to prevent easy demonising - we see, time and again, the weak and the petty achieve moments of humanity - and even those we easily dismiss as monsters are made sense of. Devotion to ideals can damn us all as surely as it can raise and refine us. Even the heroes are more complex, and, in day to day life, sometimes more cruel than we might need them to be. Parallel to the stories of nations and individuals representing those nations and their ideals, the `isms' through which a wider society gets shaped, and shapes us, are the more personal ideals we may live by. Dorrigo Evans carries both these aspects, that of the world stage, and that of the private and personal myth and story. Shortly before being catapulted into the war Evans was involved in a scorching, overwhelming encounter with Amy, his uncle's wife, and one of the themes of the book is the cataclysmic effect of love - or lust, and the confusion between the two - to shape a life, the idea of love as a guiding star, which may be as destructive - or constructive - as devotion to an ideal. It is a stunningly written book, horrific, beautiful and troubling, as hewn out of elemental stuff as Greek Tragedy, reminding me of how raw and transformative literature can be, when it engages with our deep need to make sense of our time here.
Review: Tender and beautiful - almost perfect but inconsistent - I had been recommended this book by several friends so was looking forward to reading it. I'd not heard of the author and was interested to read that his father had survived the Burma Railway - this gives the book huge personal connection which the author must convey to the reader for success. The book is approximately 450 pages, split into several sections, each then divided into small chapters. The format of the book is an old man (77) looking back at his life, the most significant time of which was spent as a Japanese POW working on the Burmese Death Railway. The narrative moves about in time from before he goes to war and up to the present day, as the human mind moves. The reader is treated respectfully by the author in that we are not told each time the period changes, meaning that the reader has to think about the book rather than just reading it. I found the book rewarding to read as I think I got into Dorrigo's mind. There is no question that this is a beautifully written book. The prose are deep but very accessible. This is a confident writer who is passionate about his subject, he is able to describe the beauty in every situation whilst never diminishing the horror. And beauty is created everywhere, from the back of his lover to the trees in the jungle The wonderful language seems to demand that it is read slowly so that even the atmosphere can be absorbed. Many times tableaux are created which can almost be seen and are worth reading over again. Horrific incidents in the camps are described in more detail than I have ever read with the author continually personalising what is happening so you never forget that these objects of torture are still humans. We also explore the rest of Dorrigo's life seeing how he was prepared to deal with his time in the camps and how he dealt with the mental scars during the rest of his life. Most of the book is wonderfully tender and some sections are completely absorbing. My only problem is that I thought that the amazing quality was not kept up all the way through and about 100 pages before the end I found that my attention was wandering more than it should have done, although the ending was as compelling as the majority of the book

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| ASIN  | 0804171475 |
| Best Sellers Rank | 1,791,017 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 268 in War Story Fiction 1,032 in Literary Fiction (Books) 1,241 in Historical Fiction (Books) |
| Customer reviews | 4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars (21,228) |
| Dimensions  | 13.13 x 2.29 x 20.32 cm |
| Edition  | Illustrated |
| ISBN-10  | 9780804171472 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0804171472 |
| Item weight  | 1.05 kg |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 416 pages |
| Publication date  | 1 Jan. 2015 |
| Publisher  | Vintage |

## Images

![The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage International) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71CdueLrLkL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A tangle of despair, degradation, confusion, certainty, beauty, horror and meaning
*by L***L on 2 November 2014*

This is a book which at times I struggled with - a hard book, but for all the right reasons, as it is confrontational, shakes the reader awake, out of complacency and denial I read this book at times as if grasping at mist. It is `everything' filled both with a sense of the utter, pointless indifference and suffering of existence and the flips, almost on a knife edge, into `peak experience' super reality, deep meaning, which vanishes as we grasp at recognising it. A book which leaves the reader (well this reader) all shook up, spread-eagled and exhausted by the whole complex STUFF of living, wondering at times whether they can bear to continue reading - or bear to stop reading. If you think `what on earth is this reviewer going on about' - well, in part that IS what the book is like, as it follows the story, flipping back and forth over a period of some fifty years, in the life of Dorrigo Evans, a Tasmanian, an Army doctor, caught up in World War 2, captured by the Japanese, and a POW involved in the brutal building of the Burma railway for the glory of Japan The structure of the novel flips over and over between Dorrigo in his 70s, the young Dorrigo, in his 20's, recently enlisted, undergoing training in Australia, then, slightly later, that intolerable, impossible experience as a POW. The `old' Dorrigo of course is at the same time those younger versions, in the way we are always living our present lives backwards, since the place we are always contains the places we have been. He, like all of us, tries to find the story which explains him to himself. This book is certainly not for the faint-hearted, or indeed those with weak stomachs. There are scorching descriptions of atrocities, the terrible effects of starvation and disease, and the implacable brutality our species can visit upon each other - and, indeed upon anything at all. What Flanagan achieves however is to prevent easy demonising - we see, time and again, the weak and the petty achieve moments of humanity - and even those we easily dismiss as monsters are made sense of. Devotion to ideals can damn us all as surely as it can raise and refine us. Even the heroes are more complex, and, in day to day life, sometimes more cruel than we might need them to be. Parallel to the stories of nations and individuals representing those nations and their ideals, the `isms' through which a wider society gets shaped, and shapes us, are the more personal ideals we may live by. Dorrigo Evans carries both these aspects, that of the world stage, and that of the private and personal myth and story. Shortly before being catapulted into the war Evans was involved in a scorching, overwhelming encounter with Amy, his uncle's wife, and one of the themes of the book is the cataclysmic effect of love - or lust, and the confusion between the two - to shape a life, the idea of love as a guiding star, which may be as destructive - or constructive - as devotion to an ideal. It is a stunningly written book, horrific, beautiful and troubling, as hewn out of elemental stuff as Greek Tragedy, reminding me of how raw and transformative literature can be, when it engages with our deep need to make sense of our time here.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tender and beautiful - almost perfect but inconsistent
*by J***U on 7 February 2017*

I had been recommended this book by several friends so was looking forward to reading it. I'd not heard of the author and was interested to read that his father had survived the Burma Railway - this gives the book huge personal connection which the author must convey to the reader for success. The book is approximately 450 pages, split into several sections, each then divided into small chapters. The format of the book is an old man (77) looking back at his life, the most significant time of which was spent as a Japanese POW working on the Burmese Death Railway. The narrative moves about in time from before he goes to war and up to the present day, as the human mind moves. The reader is treated respectfully by the author in that we are not told each time the period changes, meaning that the reader has to think about the book rather than just reading it. I found the book rewarding to read as I think I got into Dorrigo's mind. There is no question that this is a beautifully written book. The prose are deep but very accessible. This is a confident writer who is passionate about his subject, he is able to describe the beauty in every situation whilst never diminishing the horror. And beauty is created everywhere, from the back of his lover to the trees in the jungle The wonderful language seems to demand that it is read slowly so that even the atmosphere can be absorbed. Many times tableaux are created which can almost be seen and are worth reading over again. Horrific incidents in the camps are described in more detail than I have ever read with the author continually personalising what is happening so you never forget that these objects of torture are still humans. We also explore the rest of Dorrigo's life seeing how he was prepared to deal with his time in the camps and how he dealt with the mental scars during the rest of his life. Most of the book is wonderfully tender and some sections are completely absorbing. My only problem is that I thought that the amazing quality was not kept up all the way through and about 100 pages before the end I found that my attention was wandering more than it should have done, although the ending was as compelling as the majority of the book

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by M***H on 28 October 2023*

A real look into what Australian POWs went through - some parts quite tough to read. Very well written. Would defiantly recommend.

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*Last updated: 2026-03-14*