Friday, October 24, 2014

Man Booker win saves Richard Flanagan from life down the mines

Australian author who pondered drastic career change sees sales soar £140,000 in a week after prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North



Richard Flanagan
Winning for living … Man Booker prize winner Richard Flanagan. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
The Australian author Richard Flanagan, who was so short of money after completing his most recent novel that he contemplated working in north Australia’s mines, sold books worth nearly £140,000 in only seven days following last week’s Booker prize win.

Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, set on the Burma Death Railway, beat titles by authors including Ali Smith and Howard Jacobson to land the Man Booker on 14 October. Praised by chair of judges AC Grayling as “an absolutely superb novel, a really outstanding work of literature”, it sold 10,242 print copies in the UK in the week following the win, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan – something of an increase on the previous week, when it sold 316 copies.
“The £137,430 Flanagan earned last week with his Booker winner eclipsed his combined BookScan sales for the previous 10 years,” noted the Bookseller.

According to Clara Farmer, publishing director at Flanagan’s UK publisher Chatto and Windus, the Booker win offers the author his “rightful place on the world stage”.
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