The American Scholar

NUMBERS GAME

In Japan, on a cold day in the winter of 2012, Australian writer Richard Flanagan stood at the entrance of the mine where his father had labored as a POW during the Second World War. He found “no memorial, no sign, no evidence … that whatever had once happened had ever happened.” The following year, Flanagan published The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a novel inspired by his father’s experiences that won the 2014 Booker Prize.

Flanagan’s new book, —named for

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