Australian novelist Richard Flanagan has won Britain's 2014 Man Booker Prize for Literature for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Richard Flanagan. Photo: AAP
Flanagan's 100,000 word novel, his sixth, is set in part during the construction of the Thailand-Burma "Death Railway" in World War II.
The 53-year-old's book was selected for the prestigious prize from a short list of six titles, which included works by two Americans for the first time.
His father, who was a survivor of the Burma Death Railway, died at the age of 98 the day Flanagan finished the book.
Last year the Man Booker was won by New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries.
Listen to Richard Flanagan talking on Saturday Morning