the narrow road to the deep north by richard flanagan

Tasmanian-born novelist Richard Flanagan named his latest book after a spiritually intense travel journal by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho, but this extraordinary new novel presents us with a story much more tumultuous than the great haiku writer's account of his wanderings. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. It will be Tasmanians who pay for this in foregone housing assistance and closed hospital beds.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Narrow Road to the Deep North Author Richard Flanagan Nor has the Tasmanian government costed the public transport links, major road works on one of the state’s busiest arterial roads and provision for parking, which will be hundreds of millions of dollars more. As well as seeming to heroically underestimate costs – the Perth Optus stadium was originally budgeted at $700 million but ended up costing $1.8 billion – in a year in which construction material prices rose by 24 per cent, the stadium costs, in a feat of magical thinking, dropped from $750 million to $715 million. The process since has been a secretive and shambolic exercise.

A bullying AFL is seen to have blackmailed a weak Liberal state government into agreeing to the stadium as the price of being given a Tassie team, despite no such demand ever having been made of any other state. And while there seems to be only very limited public money and political will to address these issues, there seems to be no problem in ponying up hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars for a new stadium. In addition to housing, it has Australia’s worst public health system, and, with 50 per cent illiteracy, a public education problem.

The stadium has become a symbol of government inaction on these issues that blight Australia’s smallest state. According to Burton, families now live in tents and cars, a situation apparent to anyone wandering the parks and byways of Hobart. Charlie Burton, the chief executive of community services body Tascoss, says Hobart has had the highest increase in homelessness in Australia since the last census, a situation worsened by Hobart being the most unaffordable capital city in Australia in terms of everyday living expenses.

The narrow road to the deep north by richard flanagan