Wanting

and force of its power in human affairs.’”

—The New Yorker

“Flanagan is a beautiful writer and Wanting is a beautiful and considered addition to his oeuvre.”

—The Age (Australia)

“Passionate and eloquent.”

—The Sunday Times (London)

“Complex and riveting fiction… An ingenious, thoughtful and potent demonstration of this assured author’s imaginative versatility.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Astounding… A stunning book… Wanting deserves the highest accolades.”

—Sunday Tasmanian

“Flanagan’s prose is beautifully crafted, at once elegant and astonishing… Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal (a Best Book of 2009)

“Flanagan’s control of his material is awe-inspiring, and he writes beautifully to boot.”

—Time Out (London)

“The novel boasts many symmetries and ironies, which are the stuff of poetry rather than history.”

—The Australian

“[Flanagan’s] depiction of desire’s effects is sublime.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Moving seamlessly through time, across two continents and between three storylines, Wanting is a marvel of precision and cohesion.”

—The Sun-Herald (Sydney)

“Wanting is a novel you never want to end. As a reader, I can think of no greater accolade.”

—The Canberra Times

Also By Richard Flanagan

Death of a River Guide

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Gould’s Book of Fish

The Unknown Terrorist

Copyright

Copyright © 2008 by Richard Flanagan.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JUNE 2010

ISBN: 978-1-443-40057-2

Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Originally published in Australia in 2008 as a Knopf book, published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd.

First published in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in an original trade paperback edition: 2009.

This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2010

Epigraph from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, published by Vintage.

Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Flanagan, Richard, 1961–

Wanting / Richard Flanagan.

I. Title.

PR9619.3.F53W35 2010 823’.914 C2010-900801-4