'With The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013), Richard Flanagan became Australia’s third winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction, leading many people to pick up his novels for the first time and to look for some critical support in reading them. After my own review of the novel in SRB, I was bailed up by friends – many of whom had read it in book groups – to report on lively disagreements (often with my review). Apart from reviews, there were a few articles scattered in academic journals but no easily accessible, book-length study. So this new collection of essays on his work, edited by Robert Dixon, is a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion of our latest literary superstar.' (Introduction)