The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Ever since I read an advance copy of The Narrow Road to the Deep North a couple of months ago I've been looking forward to telling you how good it is. I'll be surprised if I read a better book this year. It's a harrowing story, of Australian prisoners of war building the Burma railway as slave laborers and dying by the score, and of one of them in particular, their commander Dorrigo Evans, who lives long past the war but never outlives it. Like The Road or Unbroken, it presents the utter worst that humanity can descend to while leaving you with an almost mournful sense of the best we are capable of as well, not the least of which is the beauty of Flanagan's novel itself.