The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Set in August 1943 in a Japanese camp for prisoners of war beside the Thai-Burma Death Railway, Richard Flanagan's sixth novel follows Dorrigo Evans, an Australian surgeon. He struggles to keep the men under his command alive through starvation, cholera and beatings, while the memory of a love affair two years earlier with Amy, his uncle's young wife, haunts him. Flashbacks return to his early life in rural Tasmania, and the story also follows him decades later as a celebrated war veteran privately troubled by failure and guilt. The title comes from a famous work of Japanese literature by the haiku poet Basho. The novel won the Man Booker Prize and was adapted as a television miniseries starring Jacob Elordi.

It appears in a roundup of the books Barack Obama recommended during his presidency.