- Published: 12 April 2023
- ISBN: 9781761048180
- Imprint: Penguin
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 272
- RRP: $22.99
Wanting

















- Published: 12 April 2023
- ISBN: 9781761048180
- Imprint: Penguin
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 272
- RRP: $22.99
One of the best novels of this year
The Times
Wanting is a novel you never want to end. As a reader, I can offer no greater accolade
Canberra Times
A haunting and powerful story... Mr Flanagan does a magical job of conjuring his native Tasmania as it must have appeared to English settlers ... And he enlivens his discursive narrative with some dazzling set pieces
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
What a voice! ... Dickens would have applauded Flanagan's style. There can be no author more passionate or unfettered than Flanagan
Sydney Morning Herald
A summary does little justice to the complexities and nuances of this dense and fascinating novel ... There are moments of great power and lyricism in Wanting
William Boyd, New York Times Book Review
Flanagan brilliantly excavates historical truth with the light touch of an irresistibly good story, humour, and the wry observance that much of European civilisation depends on not dancing naked in polite drawing rooms.
Rachel Holmes, The Times
Richard Flanagan is an exemplary case in point. Through his fiction, flat, conformist portraits of individuals become rich and three-dimensional, new witnesses provide fresh testimony about the past, and Tasmania’s silences resound with voices.
New York Times Book Review
Moving seamlessly through time, across two continents and between three storylines, WANTING is a marvel of precision and cohesion.
The Sun Herald
This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more.
Stella Clarke, Sydney Morning Herald
Flanagan is a beautiful writer and Wanting is a beautiful and considered addition to his oeuvre.
The Age
As usual, Flanagan is brilliant at re-creating this "weird land predating time, with its vulgar rainbow colours, its vile, huge forests and bizarre animals that seemed to have been lost since Adam's exile".
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
In Wanting Richard Flanagan has written an exquisite, profoundly moving, intricately structured meditation about the desire for human connection in its many forms -- that commingling of compassion, curiosity, care, lust, attraction, intrigue, selfishness and selflessness that is clumsily grouped under that most perilous of all abstract nouns: love.
Jon Fasman, Los Angeles Times
WA Premiers Literary Award
Winner • 2008 • WA Premier's Literary Award (Fiction)
Queensland Literary Awards
Winner • 2009 • Queensland Literary Awards
Miles Franklin Literary Award
Shortlisted • 2009 • Miles Franklin Literary Award
NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Shortlisted • 2009 • NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Prime Minister's Literary Awards
Shortlisted • 2009 • Prime Minister's Literary Awards
Tasmanian Literary Prizes
Winner • 2010 • Tasmanian Literary Prizes (Tasmanian Content)