Barry Unsworth evokes a distant past filled with deception and mystery, whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today
Sacred Hunger
Written by Barry Unsworth
- Winner
- The Booker Prize 1992
- Published by Hamish Hamilton
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Barry Unsworth’s gripping historical novel about the Atlantic slave trade shared the Booker Prize 1992 with Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
Outcast Matthew Paris boards the Liverpool Merchant as ship’s doctor on a slave trade voyage. Illness breaks out, and slaves are ordered to be tossed overboard. Mutiny ensues and, with Paris as one of the leaders, the ship sails for Florida to establish an egalitarian society. Meanwhile, the loss of the ship has ruined its owner, Kemp, who hangs himself. Twelve years later, upon hearing rumours of a utopian interracial community in Florida, Kemp’s son sets out for revenge.
Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth was born in London. He published 17 novels, and is best known for his historical fiction
More about Barry Unsworth Other nominated books by Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth’s detective story set in the 14th century, a time of calamity such as few others have been, marked by war, plague and fear of hellfire
Barry Unsworth’s complex study of betrayal, paranoia, deception and fear, delivered by Pascali himself – an altogether untrustworthy narrator
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