Three years after taking out the Man Booker prize, Richard Flanagan’s epic The Narrow Road to the Deep North is to be adapted for television.
The bestselling Australian author has signed a deal with FremantleMedia Australia for his novel to be made into a high-end drama series about the horrific ordeals of the prisoners on the death railway between Thailand and Burma during the second world war.
Flanagan, 57, was inspired to write the novel by his father’s experience as a prisoner of war, forced by the Japanese to work on the railway.
He was “delighted” that the book would be made into a series “in this age of great television drama, promising the quality, the depth and the occasional brilliance of which the form is now capable”.
FremantleMedia’s director of drama, Jo Porter, said the Deep North was a compelling universal story made for television.
“Rich with insights on the human condition, it is ripe for screen adaptation with huge visual potential and scale,” Porter said.
“At its core is an achingly powerful examination of the many forms of love, forged through the crucible of war.”
FremantleMedia’s production of Picnic at Hanging Rock for Foxtel and Amazon Prime will have its world television premiere on 6 May on Foxtel.
No broadcaster is yet attached to this project, a spokesman for FremantleMedia said.
First published in 2013, Deep North sold more than a million copies in 42 countries, and is a bestseller in the UK, Australia and the US.
Winning the Booker changed Flanagan’s life as he had run out of money and was going to work in the mines to make a living.
“A year and a half ago, when I finished this book, I was contemplating going to get what work I could in the mines in far northern Australia because things had come to such a pass with my writing,” Flanagan said when he won. “I had spent so long on this book.”
