Good Scribes Only #34 đŠđșđ€ïž The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan
You donât always need a plane ticket to travel; sometimes, all you need is a book. Often, fictional stories can help us explore worlds outside our own, take us out of lifeâs everyday tangles, and allow us to widen our perspective. Fifth stop, Oceania! We hope you enjoy this discussion about 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' by Richard Flanagan.
đŠ Welcome to Australia. This week we read The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a book about warâs cruelties as well as the impossibility of love. The novel follows a single day in the life of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor working as a slave in a Japanese labor camp in 1943. The novel jumps around in time and setting, journeying from Tokyo to the Burma railway, from the caves of Tasmania to a pre-war beachside hotel, ultimately providing the reader a view into just how challenging it can be to find meaning and love after an intense war experience.
In this episode Dan and I discuss memory, time, the dual nature of man, art, eastern vs western culture, ethnocentrism, and the challenge of love. Itâs a dark, intense, poetically written book and a great stop for the Australia episode of this season.
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. Sometimes even traveling to a place doesn't permit you to see it for how it really is for those who live there. Fiction, on the other hand, can. And thus, season 3 is about widening our perspective. We hope you're coming along can help do the same. Be sure to check out the Episode Cheat Sheet for an overview.
We hope you enjoy this discussion about The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
0-5 min â Squirrel gate!
5-10 min â Book introduction
10-15 min â Casting the movie
15-22 min â Plot summary
22-25 min â Novelâs structure
25-30 min â On memory
30-35 min â Post-war treatment of enemies
35-40 min â Dorrigoâs affair
40-45 min â Dorrigoâs struggles
45-50 min â Philosophies behind the novel
50-55 min â Fame and reality
55-60 min â Final thoughts