Death of a River Guide

A Novel

Pages: 336
Published: 1994
Language: English

As Aljaz Cosini lies dying at the bottom of a river in Tasmania, his final moments trigger a decades-long reckoning with an abusive father and a murder he could never forget. Richard Flanagan's lyrical, elegiac debut weaves together memory, guilt, and redemption across generations, told through prose that meditates on loss as much as it recounts events.

Prose complexity: 7/10

Dark Melancholic Reflective

Drama Literary Fiction Biography

Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan (born 1 July 1961) is an Australian novelist and historian from Tasmania, descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land. He left school at sixteen, later graduating from the University of Tasmania and winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. His novels include Death of a River Guide, Gould's Book of Fish and The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which won the 2014 Booker Prize.