Immaculately kept yet heartbreaking, the Death Railway war graves in Thailand and Burma mark one of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. In 1943 the Japanese drove a quarter of a million slave labourers to establish a supply route from Bangkok to Burma. Around half perished. Australian author Richard Flanagan’s father Archie survived. Unusually, he spoke of his experiences with his family; his son describes himself as “a child of the death railway”. That child grew up to give us this deeply compassionate, humane and courageous work which has deservedly won the 2014 Man Booker.The Narrow Road to the Deep North combines the truth of memoir with the emotional force of poetry and imagination. It is structured around an intense love story, and its driving forces are