Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and today I'm talking to Richard Flanagan.

His book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

But that's not why we're talking about it.

We're talking about it because it is a true novel of the meeting, often frightening, of cultures.

And the title, The Narrow Road to the Deep North,

comes from a travel log by the Japanese poet Basho.

But another poem that dominates the book

is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson about Ulysses.

The narrator is born in Tasmania.

Many of the characters in the book are Japanese, Korean. It is a novel of that meeting of cultures that

occurs during World War II among prisoners of war in the Pacific. The specific event is the

building of the railroad. What is it called?

The Death Railway. That's what it's known as in Australia. It was a 428 kilometre length of railway

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