Is this history more important than ANZAC Day?

And Nakamura could see that, in this sacrifice too, there was no other way for the Emperor's wishes to be realised. What was a prisoner of war anyway? Less than a man, just materiel to be used to make the railways, like the teak sleepers and steel rails and dog spikes

I've always been an admirer of Richard Flanagan's work so when I saw his latest book while dashing through T2 Sydney airport on my last flight before the Christmas break I grabbed it, knowing that here was one volume that would not join the growing pile I start but never finish.

About this time, Flanagan was interviewed in a weekend magazine and I learned the work was inspired by his father's POW experience and had been many years in the making. Indeed his words hang together in perfect, truthful prose - the tools of a master craftsman - and the result is extraordinary.

Narrow Roadis a great yarn and much more besides. It brings a vital piece of our history to life in a spectacular and unforgettable way. My own view is that the story of the Thai Burma Railway and the 60 000 Allied prisoners who died building it should feature in history lessons as much, if not more than Gallipoli.

The central character, Dorrigo Evans, is a colonel and doctor in a prisoner of war camp on the so called 'Death Railway'. The novel moves between the daily atrocities experienced by Evans and his men and the love story that straddles his life.

Many books and films have dealt with the cruelty and inhumanity shown by an occupying force to its prisoners. Some readers, learning of the subject matter, might think 'another harrowing POW tale… maybe give it a miss?' Please don't.

Yes, there are passages of unerring horror – the death of a man beaten almost to the end who is still proud enough to try to make it to the latrines but falls to drown in a sea of filth is one such example – however we feel, not just revulsion and distress but a certain detached insight.

We are witnesses, not participants, and it is by witnessing that we see and sense all of the forces at work in the souls of the men, their captors and especially Evans.

One of the strengths of the narrative is its sheer lack of judgment. Whether describing Evans' desperate operation to amputate a progressively gangrenous leg, not realising his patient had died, or the Korean guard who in the post war trials bears his sentence to death 'like an animal … without understanding but with a dull awareness', Flanagan's descriptions are dispassionate. Indignation, distress, sadness are for the reader to feel, rather than the words to express.

A tender contrast to the savagery of the landscape and story, is the love that captures Evans. He had an affair with his uncle's younger wife, Amy, before the war and when posted, promised to come back to her. But her house burns down and in the only lie his wife Ella ever tells him, Evans believes Amy perished in the blaze.

In a passage of awful pathos near the end of the book, they pass each other on the Harbour Bridge. He had thought her dead but here she is walking towards him.

'Time had made her more, not less beautiful. As though, rather than taking, age had simply revealed who she really was'.

And in a paragraph that further evokes his suffering,,.

'The abyss of the years – with their historic wars, their celebrated inventions, their innumerable horrors and miraculous wonders – had, he realised, all been about nothing. The bomb, the Cold War, Cuba and transistor radios had no power over her swagger, her imperfect ways… her face, slightly gaunt with its defining lines, seemed to him full of some hard-won self-possession.'

He had a few moments to decide whether to call out or walk on by. He walks, regrets it and realises it is too late. She has also seen him, but confused because she thinks he betrayed her, says nothing. In any case she is being nursed by her sister through a terminal illness and has not long to live.

Evans is, reluctantly, on his way to Tasmania to see Ella and their children at the time of the bridge incident. His family becomes trapped in a bush fire and he drives like a crazed person to rescue them from the side of the road. He runs to grab them and, for a moment, clutches his wife's head 'hard against his'. And, as Flanagan narrates, 'it was more affection than his three children had seen their father show their mother in a lifetime.'

Narrow Road does much more than inform, entertain and hold its readership. It provokes big questions.

What is it that makes a man good? What saves a man?

Evans is a hero to his men during the war and a hero to the public after. He is a great protector, caring for the prisoners he leads, fighting for them, and doing everything to keep sick men off the line. By never appearing to lose hope, he gives them hope in what essentially was a hopeless situation.

When he comes home, he is feted and acclaimed but, inside, he is empty. The camaraderie shared by the surviving men – at least until their demons destroy them – is not accessible to him. They are tortured by their experiences but he is crippled emotionally, not just by the horrors of war, but by losing the woman he loved.

Too easily we choose our heroes, as the public chose Evans. It fits the easy 'brave men versus villains' way we are taught to judge the world. It makes us look at life through the prism of what should be, rather than what is.

I like Evans and he blames himself unnecessarily for failing his mates.

Undoubtedly he saved lives and inspired men. But as his family escapes the bushfire, his children absorbing 'the tormented hopeless feeling of two people who lived together in a love not yet love, nor yet not; an unshared life shared ', it seems his decision to walk away from the person he really is, has become the thing he regrets the most.

A few weeks after finishing the book I took myself to see The Railwayman, a biographical drama, about a death railway POW (Colin Firth) who meets a woman on a train (Nicole Kidman) and marries her, only to be consumed by rage and despair about the treatment he received from his Japanese interrogator.

At his wife's urging, he confronts the man and they become friends.

Love, war, horror, sacrifice and redemption are too neatly rolled up and resolved in a two hour script. If you can get past an oddly young looking Colin Firth and a Nicole Kidman with facial expressions as fixed as her cardigan, you may, like me, feel this film is a little too light about a very dark subject.

So my suggestion; don't rush to see the Railwayman but make sure you read Flanagan. And, in doing so, feel proud of our heritage and proud of his writing.