If you agree that a great book does compel you to reread your own soul, you will find yourself contemplating the capabilities of the human spirit after finishing The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. What astonished me most about this award-winning novel was the way contradictions flowed through so many of the characters, who were capable of violence and kindness, guilt and heroism, elegance and force, loneliness and love, light and darkness. The juxtaposition of contradictions is found in many literary classics, and I believe that this book will become one of them.
Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC: 2013), 26.