Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan (born 1961) is a novelist from Tasmania, Australia.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Novels 3 Other 4 Works 4.1 Non-fiction 4.2 Films 4.3 Novels 5 Notes 6 External links

Early life

Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three brothers is Australian Rules football journalist Martin Flanagan. He grew up in the remote mining town of Rosebery on Tasmania's western coast.^[1][2][3]

Flanagan left school at the age of 16. He returned to study at the University of Tasmania, where he was president of the Student Union. He achieved a first class honours degree in 1982. In the following year was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. At Worcester College, Oxford, he was admitted to the degree of Master of Letters in History. Flanagan wrote four non-fiction works before moving to fiction, works he has called 'his apprenticeship'.^[1][2][4]

In the foreword to Flanagan's first book, A Terrible Beauty - History of the Gordon River Country (1985), Bob Brown wrote,

Australia has not heard the last of the Tasmanian wilderness nor, I happily predict, has it heard the last of Richard Flanagan.

Novels

His first novel, Death of a River Guide (1997), is the tale of Aljaz Cosini, river guide, who lies drowning, reliving his life and the lives of his family and forebears. It was described by "The Times Literary Supplement" as ‘one of the most auspicious debuts in Australian writing’. His next book, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1998), which tells the story of Slovenian immigrants, was a major bestseller, selling more than 150,000 copies in Australia alone. Flanagan’s first two novels, declared Kirkus Reviews, ‘rank with the finest fiction out of Australia since the heyday of Patrick White’. Gould's Book of Fish (2001), Flanagan’s third novel, is based on the life of William Buelow Gould, a convict artist, and tells the tale of his love affair with a young black woman in 1828. It went on to win the 2002 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Flanagan has described these early novels as 'soul histories'. Flanagan’s fourth novel was The Unknown Terrorist (2006), which "The New York Times" called ‘stunning . . . a brilliant meditation upon the post-9/11 world’.^[5] His fifth novel, Wanting (2008) tells two parallel stories: about the novelist Charles Dickens in England, and Mathinna, an Aboriginal orphan adopted by Lady Jane Franklin, the wife of the colonial Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). As well as being a New Yorker Book of the Year and Observer Book of the Year, it won the Queensland Premier's Prize, the Western Australian Premier's Prize and the Tasmania Book Prize.

His most recent book is a collection of non-fiction, 'And What Do You Do, Mr Gable? (2011).

Other

The 1998 film of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, written and directed by Flanagan, was nominated for best film at that year's Berlin Film Festival.

Flanagan has written on literature, the environment and politics for the Australian and international press. Some have proved controversial. "The Selling-out of Tasmania", published after the death of former Premier Jim Bacon in 2004, was critical of the Bacon government's relationship with corporate interests in the state. Premier Paul Lennon declared, "Richard Flanagan and his fictions are not welcome in the new Tasmania."^[6]

Flanagan's 2007 essay, 'Gunns. Out of Control' in The Monthly,^[7] first published as 'Paradise Razed' in the Daily Telegraph,^[8] is credited as catalysing Sydney businessman Geoffrey Cousins' high profile campaign against the Gunns' two billion dollar Bell Bay Pulp Mill.^[9]

He has worked with Baz Luhrmann as a writer on the 2008 film Australia. A painting of Richard Flanagan by artist Geoffrey Dyer won the 2003 Archibald Prize.^[10] Also a rapid on the Franklin River, Flanagan's Surprise, is named after him.^[11]

Works

Non-fiction

• (1985) A terrible beauty: history of the Gordon River country^[12]
• (1990) The Rest of the world is watching - Tasmania and the Greens^[13]
• (1991) Codename Iago: the story of John Friedrich^[14][15]
• (1991) Parish-Fed Bastards. A History of the Politics of the Unemployed in Britain, 1884-1939^[16]
• (2011) And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?

Films

• (1998) The Sound of One hand Clapping (Director and scriptwriter)
• (2008) Australia (Co-writer)

Novels

• Death of a River Guide (1994)
• The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997)
• Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001)^[17][18]
• The Unknown Terrorist (2006)^[19]
• Wanting (2008)^{[20][21][22][23]}

Notes

External links

• [1] Representation of Region and Nation in Literary Culture Studies Conference, University of Madras, 2009. Transcript of Plenary session 'The (Hydro)power Relations within Nation and Region, and the (de)formation of Identity in the case of Richard Flanagan' by Dr. CA. Cranston. Discusses the relationship of Flanagan's novels, films, to Island politics.
• ABC.net.au Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval on The Book Show, ABC Radio National from Byron Bay Writers Festival, July 2007
• Richard Flanagan at Contemporary Writers
• ABC.net.au
• Articles and videos at The Monthly

Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book Winners 1987–1989 Olive Senior (1987) Festus Iyayi (1988) Janet Frame (1989) 1990–1999 Mordecai Richler (1990) David Malouf (1991) Rohinton Mistry (1992) Alex Miller (1993) Vikram Seth (1994) Louis de Bernières (1995) Rohinton Mistry (1996) Earl Lovelace (1997) Peter Carey (1998) Murray Bail (1999) 2000–2009 J. M. Coetzee (2000) Peter Carey (2001) Richard Flanagan (2002) Austin Clarke (2003) Caryl Phillips (2004) Andrea Levy (2005) Kate Grenville (2006) Lloyd Jones (2007) Lawrence Hill (2008) Christos Tsiolkas (2009) 2010–2019 Rana Dasgupta (2010) TBD (2011)

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Name	Flanagan, Richard
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Date of birth	1961
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