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Why it matters
Flanagan joins prisoner suffering to a complex meditation on memory and moral survival.
Opening the archive

2014 selection · Literary fiction
Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans survives forced labor on the Thai–Burma railway while carrying memories of a forbidden affair. Decades later, love, guilt, and wartime brutality remain inseparable.
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Flanagan joins prisoner suffering to a complex meditation on memory and moral survival.
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You can handle harrowing war fiction anchored by a complicated love story.
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