The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

Hard to tell a tale of grim facts which we can all Google online and to keep our interest; Richard Flanagan does a capable job. We are mainly placed in the construction of The Death Railway, the Burma- Thailand Railway built in WW2 by the slave labour of Japanese prisoners of war. Dorrigo Evans is a hero and medical colonel, a leader of men. We shuttle back and forth to his civilian life before and after and Love is the additional interest, well presented albeit sombre urgent philandering, not very light or giggly.

Richard's strong on detail 'over the rocky slopes and screes, through the mountain passes, the broken villages, past the rotting flesh, the stone walls groggily half standing, again and again that spilt olive oil smell, the dead horse smell, the scattered chairs and broken tables and beds smell, the collapsed roofs of broken houses smell, as the enemy seventy-fives kept pounding ahead and behind them '(p31);that part's near the beginning, a march forward from Syria;  he can write well about dead bodies and also living ones.

There's a lot of interest in this period right now, yesterday I saw the movie The Railway Man told from the English side and based on the book by Eric Lomax, an engineer and prisoner. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is fuelled by the author's awareness of his ex-POW father.

Would I have voted for it to win the Booker? Don't know, I have not yet looked at the competitors.