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On Tuesday in London, the judging panel for Britain's 2014 Man Booker Prize for literature announced this year's winner: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Australian Richard Flanagan.

The novel, Flanagan's sixth, tells the story of POWs in World War II who were forced by their captors to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway, also known as the "Death Railway" for the more than 100,000 who died in the process of building it.

NPR's Lynn Neary reported that the book was inspired by Flanagan's father, who was a real-life POW made to work on the railway. She says Flanagan's father died on the same day his son told him the novel was complete.

Lynn adds:

"A.C. Grayling, who chaired the judge's committee, called it a 'magnificent novel of love and war.' It is, he said, 'the book that Richard Flanagan was born to write.' "

This was the first year the Man Booker Prize was open to American writers. NPR reported in September that two Americans were shortlisted for the award this year: Joshua Ferris for his work To Rise Again at a Decent Hour and Karen Joy Fowler for her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

More from Lynn:

"The Man Booker Prize has always been open to writers in the U.K. and commonwealth countries. The decision to include writers from the U.S. was a controversial one, but Grayling said in the end, Americans did not 'overwhelm' the process."

NPR book critic Alan Cheuse reviewed The Narrow Road in August of this year:

"Flanagan's descriptions of the daily round of increased labor, diminishing food and nightmarish hygiene make for difficult reading. The set-pieces showing off Japanese cruelty seem almost beyond credulity, as when one Japanese officer describes in great detail how an older officer instructed him in the proper way to behead prisoners, or when we hear eyewitness testimony about the experimental live dissection of a prisoner of war, or the stark physical descriptions of prisoners in various states of sickness and dying. All this makes for a portrait of war in the Pacific that could have been rendered by Hieronymus Bosch. ...

"After setting down this eccentric masterwork of a novel, full of deep insight, afflicted love and cosmic passion alongside painful, even horrendous suffering, Flanagan's music still plays on and on in my head."

richard flanagan

Man Booker Prize

It is true, in fact, that it's always fun to work on the great historical, canonical literary classics because there's one less person who has to approve what I do — that is the author who doesn't get a say because they are dead. ... There's a certain kind of freedom that comes from that, that engenders designs that are unencumbered and fun and exciting in a way that working for a living author—those designs tend to be a little more complex.

I really feel the onus of that living author. They've worked possibly for years on this book, mostly in solitude. And then they come to me with this manuscript and it's a very tender moment. And writers are sensitive people in general, so I take that responsibility very seriously.

But that relationship between you and the author and the guilt that one feels if one possibly gets it wrong — you tense up sometimes with that responsibility.

On his cover-designing process

“ There's a lot of trial and error in it ... but while I'm designing, I'm then looking at the things that I've made to see if they feel consonant with the way that I felt when I was reading. That's really the moment that you know if you've made a book jacket that works.

I mark up the manuscript as I'm going — anytime there's something I think could be potentially that symbol, that thing that could represent the text as a whole — and then I look back over those notes and I start sketching from them. ...

When I have a sketch that seems like it could be compelling in some way, I render it more fully. I make a collage or I'll take a photo or I'll work on the computer or I'll set the typography. There's a lot of trial and error in it ... but while I'm designing, I'm then looking at the things that I've made to see if they feel consonant with the way that I felt when I was reading. That's really the moment that you know if you've made a book jacket that works. ...

I make the design. I print it out. I wrap it around a book. I leave it on my bookshelf face out and then I willfully try to forget about it. One of the things about making anything is in order to discern whether what you've made is working or not, you need some objectivity. You need some distance from it.

On "what we see when we read"

I'm not a neuroscientist; I'm not a professional philosopher; I'm not that qualified to talk about mental content and what it is and why it comes to be. How I am qualified is that I read books all the time and try to visualize their contents. I have this working knowledge of the imagination in that sense. ...

What We See When We Read

A Phenomenology

by Peter Mendelsund

Paperback, 419 pages | purchase

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When I was thinking of Anna Karenina, I wasn't quite imagining a person. Or if I was, I was imagining a very specific person that I knew, say a relative. Often it would be a combination of two people that I knew. Sometimes I wouldn't be imagining anything for her — I would have a placeholder in my mind that said "Anna Karenina."

When we describe the reading experience, we describe this metaphor of watching a film — that we see the author's works projected in our minds and we watch that image passively. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that metaphor was misleading. Not only are we not picturing the author's world, the author gives us very few prompts when it comes to describing characters, ... we were making these [images] ourselves out of our memories. And the process was much more weird than I had previously thought.

On the rise of electronic books and the future of physical books and their jackets

I'm very heartened these days to find, in fact, people still really want physical books.

I spoke recently at Sarah Lawrence College, and after I was done with my talk, I canvassed the crowd of young people just to find out, "Hey, what formats are you guys reading on?"

The fascinating thing was that everybody was reading on multiple formats and the more fascinating thing was that all of these kids knew what the benefits and limitations of each of those formats were.

Someone would say, "When I want to travel, I take things on my Kindle." ...

"When I'm working on a complicated text that I need to cross-reference a lot, or that needs to be open to the Internet or Wikipedia in some way, I'll read electronically."

"If there's a book I want to keep around for any period of time, that I want to annotate, that I want to give as a gift, I'll read a physical book."

It seems like now we're really coming to a place where we're not expecting the digital medium to replace the physical medium — and that makes me incredibly happy.

What's for dinner on World Food Day?

How about a humble meal of dried termites stirred into a sukuma wiki stew? With a side of sorghum couscous?

World Food Day was invented by the U.N. in 1979 and first celebrated the next year. One goal is to promote underutilized, highly nutritious foods for the 800 million people in lower income countries who can't easily prepare balanced meals.

We asked Action Against Hunger, a nonprofit group, to cook up a list of foods that could make a big nutritional difference. And yes, the list includes termites.

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Lynette Schimming/Flickr

Lynette Schimming/Flickr

Termites, Three Ways

Yes, the same bug that could destroy the wood in your home is a highly nutritious food: 35 percent protein and a good source of calcium, iron and zinc. Termites can be dried like beef jerky and then later added into any meal for a protein boost. These bugs are typically harvested from the mounds they construct and live in, says Muriel Calo, a researcher at Action Against Hunger.

If you don't want to take time to dry them, just toss them in a frying pan. They're really easy to cook: termites fry in their own fat. Daniella Martin, author of Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet, also recommends tossing them with olive oil, crushed garlic and salt before baking them at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

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Stacy Spensley/Flickr

Stacy Spensley/Flickr

Dip Into Green Gram

Green gram, also known as mung bean, is a high-protein legume that is native to India and is now grown across East Africa and Southeast Asia. The beans can be boiled in water until they are soft and then either pureed into a hummus-like dip or eaten as is. They can grow almost anywhere there's a bit of soil.

Sometimes You Feel Like A Groundnut

This root legume resembles its relative the peanut. The powerhouse groundnut is such a good source of nutrients that it's often turned into Plumpy'Nut, a nutrient-dense paste given to children suffering from malnutrition. But the high demand for this crop also means that many farmers who grow groundnuts are tempted to sell the harvest rather than eating it themselves.

Calo hopes that the more farmers and their families understand the value of these legumes as part of a balanced diet, the more likely they will be to eat them themselves. In Haiti, groundnuts are turned into a butter similar to American peanut butter, with a twist. The nuts are grilled and then ground in a traditional grinder, says Stephanie Armand, author of A Taste for Haiti, a traditional Haitian cookbook. The paste is mixed with salt and hot pepper.

Or you can just roast 'em and eat 'em.

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I Believe I Can Fry/Flickr

I Believe I Can Fry/Flickr

Sukuma Wiki aka Collard Greens

That's the Swahili phrase for collard greens, which are packed with iron, calcium, protein and all sorts of vitamins and minerals.

But that's only part of the reason greens are a staple dish in parts of Kenya and other East African countries. The literal translation of sukuma wiki is "stretch through the week" — a fitting description for a crop that's great for feeding families on a tight budget. In Africa's tropical heat, these leafy greens can grow 3 to 4 feet tall year-round. And families and farmers can periodically pick the leaves throughout the year without harming the plant. The greens often stewed and served alongside porridge, but for households with a some extra ingredients in their kitchen, it can be sauteed with onions, tomatoes and even meat and fish.

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Armin Vogel/Flickr

Armin Vogel/Flickr

Sorghum and Millet Can Make The Cake (And The Couscous)

Sorghum, an ancient grain that originated in Northeastern Africa is mostly used for animal feed and ethanol production in the U.S. But throughout Africa and in parts of Asia and South America, sorghum, and its cousin millet (pictured, left), commonly make filling and nutritious meals.

Sorghum and millet can thrive where "other more water-hungry crops cannot grow," says Tim Dalton, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University. So unlike corn, sorghum and millet can withstand the tropical heat and won't die if there's a drought.

The grains often eaten as porridge or ground into flour to make bread and cakes. Sometimes water is added to the flour, which is then shaped into balls and steamed. Voila – sorghum and/or millet couscous!

Not only are the grains rich in complex carbs, iron and vitamin B, but they also have a high glycemic index. "They digest slower, so they are good if you are living in a developing country where you're doing a lot of manual labor," says Dalton.

The Salt

Can Millet Take On Quinoa? First, It'll Need A Makeover

The Salt

Heat, Drought Draw Farmers Back To Sorghum, The 'Camel Of Crops'

He adds that it's not only good for people in lower-income countries, but also people right here in the U.S. In fact, he says, sorghum and millet could well become the next quinoa. For those looking for a new grain to try, there are lots of recipes to start with, including some by celebrity chef and sorghum enthusiast Marc Forgione.

groundnut

mung beans

millet

sorghum

collard greens

termites

World Food Day

Mexico's banking regulator slapped a nearly 30 million peso ($2.2 million) fine on the Citigroup subsidiary Banamex, for failing to provide sufficient accounting controls. The regulator said the lack of oversight allowed the Mexican firm Oceanografia to allegedly dupe the bank out of $400 million.

Banamex had loaned the money to Oceanografia, an oil services firm contracted by the state petroleum monopoly PEMEX, based on invoices that turned out to be fake.

Oceanografia has not been charged with any wrongdoing but is under investigation. The company's CEO and controlling shareholder, Amado Yanez Osuna, had been under house arrest for nearly two months. He faces bank fraud charges in Mexico but was released earlier this summer after posting $6.2 million bond.

Citigroup fired 12 Banamex employees after discovering the alleged fraud, which also led to the resignation of several high-level employees, including Chief Executive Javier Arrigunaga, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But the Mexican newspaper Reforma points out that the fine represents less than half a percent of Banamex's earnings during the first half of this year.

For its part, Banamex says it has paid the fine and has reinforced its internal accounting controls.

However, earlier this week Citigroup announced it had discovered a $15 million fraud. According to Reuters, the money was used by a bank-operated security company originally set up to protect Banamex board members from personal attacks, including kidnapping. But Citigroup said the security company also used the funds to offer protection services to some of Mexico's wealthiest families.

Banamex's troubles don't seem to be limited to Mexico. Reuters also reports that a source says that "Banamex USA is facing a U.S. criminal investigation involving possible violations of money-laundering laws."

banamex

Citigroup

Mexico