The Man Booker Prize winner for 2014 was announced on Tuesday. Richard Flanagan, a popular and highly-regarded Australian novelist, won it for his book The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a historical novel set during WWII.

It’s about the construction of the Thai-Burma railroad, known as the Death Railway. For an odd bit of symmetry, Flanagan’s father, who worked on this railway during World War II, died on the very day that Flanagan finished his book.

If you follow book news, you already know that this is the first year that American authors have been allowed to compete for the Booker, and two Americans made the short list: Karen Joy Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves) and Joshua Ferris (To Rise Again at a Decent Hour).

I have not yet read Flanagan’s book, but did scan the beginning of it when my husband and I visited the marvelous Strand Bookstore in New York City. I fiercely debated splurging on it, but then decided to wait for my library hold to come. I have a bad habit of putting aside books that I buy for library ones with their due dates.

The writing quality struck me as high and the historical components very interesting. Also, as a writer and reader of haibun, the title really appealed to me. It’s taken verbatim from the famous Japanese haiku and haibun master Basho’s account of his pilgrimage to the mountains. Who could resist that?

If you are looking for holiday presents or vacation reads, the other Booker short list titles include: Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (not at MCPL yet), Howard Jacobson’s J: a Novel, and Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others.  

Here’s what the Man Booker staff wrote about the winning book: “The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a love story unfolding over half a century between a doctor and his uncle’s wife. Taking its title from one of the most famous books in Japanese literature, written by the great haiku poet Basho, Flanagan’s novel has as its heart one of the most infamous episodes of Japanese history, the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War II.

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.”

Here’s the link to more information about this year’s Man Booker Prize.