Booker Prize Winner Richard Flanagan Faced Terminal Diagnosis
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Booker Prize Winner Richard Flanagan Faced Terminal Diagnosis
- Acclaimed Australian author Richard Flanagan, who won the 2014 Man Booker Prize, was reportedly diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer and told he had approximately 12 months to live.
- During the year he believed he had left, Flanagan wrote his non-fiction book "Question 7," which later won the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2024, making him the first author to win both prestigious awards.
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Richard Flanagan, the celebrated Australian novelist, faced a life-altering diagnosis of stage-four pancreatic cancer, with doctors initially giving him about 90 days, and later, approximately 12 months to live. This devastating news prompted Flanagan to begin writing what he believed would be his final book, “Question 7.”
Flanagan lived with this diagnosis for a year before undergoing further tests. His work, “Question 7,” went on to win the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024. This achievement made Flanagan the first author in history to win both the Booker Prize for fiction, which he received in 2014 for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” and the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.
Richard Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961. His Booker Prize-winning novel, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” was inspired in part by his father’s experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II, forced to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway. Flanagan is widely considered one of Australia’s most significant novelists.