Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania in 1961, tracing his ancestry, like most of the island's inhabitants, to Irish convicts transported there during the Great Famine in the mid-19th century. He studied at the University of Tasmania and pursued postgraduate studies in History at the University of Oxford. His first novel, "Death of a River Guide" (1994), was awarded the National Fiction Award in Australia. His second novel, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" (1997), was a success in his home country and was adapted into a film by Flanagan himself, who wrote the screenplay and directed it. For his third novel, "Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish" (2001), he received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2002. This was followed by the novels "The Unknown Terrorist" (2006), "Wanting" (2008), and "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (2013), which won several awards, including the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Prize (2014), The Athens Prize for Literature (2016), and the Man Booker Prize (2014), with the judging panel describing it as a "masterpiece." As a screenwriter, he collaborated with director Baz Luhrmann in 2008 on the screenplay for the film "Australia" (starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman). Richard Flanagan is considered the most talented Australian writer of his generation. He lives in Tasmania with his wife and their three daughters.