Barry Unsworth

The Songs of the Kings: A Novel

by Barry Unsworth

“Troy meant one thing only to the men gathered here, as it did to their commanders. Troy was a dream of wealth; and if the wind continued the dream would crumble.”

As the harsh wind holds the Greek fleet...

Land of Marvels: A Novel

by Barry Unsworth

Barry Unsworth, a writer with an “almost magical capacity for literary time travel” (New York Times Book Review) has the extraordinary ability to re-create the past and make it relevant to contemporary readers....

The Quality of Mercy: A Novel

by Barry Unsworth

Barry Unsworth returns to the terrain of his Booker Prize-winning novel Sacred Hunger, this time following Sullivan, the Irish fiddler, and Erasmus Kemp, son of a Liverpool slave ship owner who hanged himself....

Morality Play

by Barry Unsworth

Booker Prize Finalist

The time is the fourteenth century. The place is a small town in rural England, and the setting a snow-laden winter. A small troupe of actors accompanied by Nicholas Barber, a young renegade...

Sacred Hunger

Man Booker Prize 1992

by Barry Unsworth

Winner of the Booker Prize

A historical novel set in the eighteenth century, Sacred Hunger is a stunning, engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed in the British Empire as it entered fully into...

Losing Nelson

by Barry Unsworth

Barry Unsworth’s Losing Nelson is a novel of obsession, the story of a man unable to see himself separately from the hero he mistakenly idolizes Admiral Lord Nelson. Charles Cleasby is, in fact, a Nelson biographer...

After Hannibal

by Barry Unsworth

Golden Umbria is home to breathtaking scenery and great art; it is also where Hannibal and his invading band of Carthaginians ambushed and slaughtered a Roman legion, and where the local place-names still speak...

The Ruby in Her Navel: A Novel of Love and Intrigue in the 12th Century

by Barry Unsworth

Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, The Ruby in Her Navel is a tale in which the conflicts of the past portend the present. The novel opens in Palermo, in which Latin...

Crete

by Barry Unsworth

"His keen understanding of history and legend...illuminate[s] his visits." —Publishers Weekly

"A vivid picture of the island." —Associated Press

"It is hard to think of anywhere on earth where so many firsts...