Richard Flanagan

But from what you're saying there about how the equity markets have reacted...

It sounds like it's a bit of a narrow road to the deep north, as Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan wrote in terms of the actual story.

It's a small section of the market that's really driving it higher and is all AI.

I mean, at the moment, there's this sort of, this time it's different feel about it all, which is always dangerous in markets.

They force us to kind of have to be brave sometimes, don't they? And they're brave themselves, aren't they? They're brave themselves.

But, you know, I think about Richard Flanagan.

I've been reading Richard Flanagan's work or any number of other writers and you think It takes bravery to sit there and to tolerate, you know, this is such a cliche, you know, the blank page.

What are you going to put? I think, you know, I love reading crime, crime fiction, right? I think how do people come up with those? I just think I marvel at it.

I love it.

He also explores its effects on his father and uncle.

John has pieced together his understanding of his father's war from various sources, from things his father and his relatives told him, from what he's read, particularly the war diaries of his dad's CO, legendary Dr Weary Dunlop, the Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, and the biography of Weary Dunlop by best-selling historian Peter Fitzsimons, as well as from John's personal visits to camps where his father and uncle were held.

Their time as POWs took them from the bicycle camp, the former Dutch barracks of a bicycle infantry unit, which was filled with a huge stockpile of left-behind bicycles, to Bandung, to transit through Singapore's Changi Jail and then Bangkok, and to Konyu, the start of the Thai-Burma railway.

From there, his dad and uncle lived in camps that the prisoners built themselves as the railway progressed north-west towards Burma.

All your waking hours, basically.

And you dragged yourself back to the camp in the narrow road to the deep north.

Richard Flanagan talks.

This is the author of historical novels, Richard Flanagan.

Bridget Williams' books are $60 for the hardback.

Now, Richard Flanagan, a former guest on the show, are you a fan of this writer's work?

I am definitely a fan.

I should confess I chaired Richard Flanagan and the Auckland Writers' Festival two years ago when he brought out his book Question 7.

I think Narrow Road to the Deep North is one of the great novels of our time, won the Booker.

Question 7 won the Bailey Gifford Prize in Britain, which is Britain's leading non-fiction prize.

You know, many writers might say, well, here's a subject I'm going to write about.

I don't know much about it, but I'm jumping in.

This was also experimentally shown in the same paper when the vector of transmission from below created a substantial positive electric field accumulation at the top of the Great Pyramid, a target for negatively charged cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, which activated the chemical manufacturing sequence inside of the structure to produce sulfuric acid.

The product of the Great Pyramid is sulfuric acid, and the strongest evidence that we have for this actually comes from Christopher Dunn's book, where there was a sample analysis taken in the 1970s by Richard Flanagan, I believe it was the University of, um, either New Mexico or Nevada, um, took samples from inside of the queen's chamber and grand gallery, and they found that the salt accumulation that was up to an inch thick was calcium sulfate.

They also found big patches of gypsum, which is also a calcium sulfate based plaster.

Calcium sulfate is a direct result of the chemical reaction between dilute sulfuric acid and calcium carbonate limestone.

And, um, there's a, there's this...

Uh, you, you will know the great, um, Tasmanian writer, Richard Flanagan.

Yes.

And, uh, uh, there's this wonderful quote.

Mm.

Um, and, like, a lot of, like, I guess, like, Tim Winton novels or, like, Richard Flanagan novels explore that theme of, um, nature as this kind of, like, hostile, imposing force.

And, um, I think th- those books are, are obviously, like, classics for a reason, and they, I also think they export really well because that's, like, the kind of outsider perception of what Australia is.

It's like this remote, scary wilderness.

But when you look at Miles Franklin, there's so many that are actual historical fiction.

Novels, starting with Tom Keneally and Schindler's Ark, and then we've got Richard Flanagan, you know, Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Beautiful.

Kate Grenville, who's Like, there's so many, yes, that we wanted them to be recognized as historical fiction and not necessarily literary fiction.