[3] "[C]onsidered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist,[4] the New York Review of Books described Flanagan as "among the most versatile writers in the English language".

[8][9][10] Flanagan left school at the age of 16 but returned to study at the University of Tasmania, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First-Class Honours.

[11] The following year, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Worcester College, Oxford, where he earned the degree of Master of Letters in History.

[8][9][13] One of these was Codename Iago, an autobiography of Australian con man John Friedrich, which Flanagan ghostwrote in six weeks to make money to write his first novel.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013),[18] about a Tasmanian doctor who becomes a Japanese prisoner of war, won the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

The New Yorker noted "the novel, with its switchbacking recollections and cyclical dialogue, its penetrating scenes of birth and, eventually, death, is enigmatic and mesmerizing"[22] while the New York Review of Books called it a "tour-de-force".

[5] The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (2020) about a woman caring for her dying mother during Australia's Black Summer of climate change induced wildfires, was described in a review for The Sydney Morning Herald as "a revelation and a triumph .

[24] Flanagan has written on literature, the environment, art and politics for the Australian and international press including Le Monde, The Daily Telegraph (London), Suddeutsche Zeitung, The Monthly, The New York Times, and the New Yorker.

Out of Control" in The Monthly,[27] first published as "Paradise Razed" in The Telegraph (London),[28] inspired Sydney businessman Geoffrey Cousins' high-profile campaign to stop the building of Gunns' two billion dollar Bell Bay Pulp Mill.

[31][32] Gunns subsequently collapsed with huge debt,[33] its CEO John Gay found guilty of insider trading,[34] and the pulp mill was never built.

The book also features sketches made by the noted Australian artist Ben Quilty, who travelled with Flanagan to meet the refugees.

[1] Flanagan lives in Hobart, Tasmania with his Slovenian-born wife Majda (née Smolej) and has three daughters, Rosie, Jean and Eliza.