New Releases by Barry Unsworth

This early work by the Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth chronicles one of his literary obsessions the corruption of innocence and forms it into a compelling contemporary narrative set in the rambling, overgrown grounds of an English estate. There, relying on his rich sister Audrey''s beneficence, Simon obsessively digs a secret system of tunnels from which to spy on others. When Josh, a good-looking naif, becomes a gardener at Audrey''s home, the two women of the household, Audrey and her distant relative and housekeeper, Marion, find Josh''s strength and seeming innocence a potent spell, and his response escalates unacknowledged tensions between them. Meanwhile, Simon, worried about Josh, takes steps to prevent the exposure of his underground labyrinth. The explosive chemistry between the characters will eventually rip apart and rearrange all their lives.

"A masterful tale of treachery and duplicity. . . . Spellbinding."-- New York Times The year is 1908, the place, a small Greek island in the declining days of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. For twenty years Basil Pascali has spied on the people of his small community and secretly reported on their activities to the authorities in Constantinople. Although his reports are never acknowledged, never acted upon, he has received regular payment for his work. Now he fears that the villagers have found him out and he becomes engulfed in paranoia. In the midst of his panic, a charming Englishman arrives on the island claiming to be an archaeologist, and charms his way into the heart of the woman for whom Pascali pines. A complex game is played out between the two where cunning and betrayal may come to haunt them both. Pascali''s Island was made into a feature film starring Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren.

Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth''s first novel, published for the first time in the United States. Foley and Moss are partners in a successful small business, making plaster pixies for the tourist trade. Foley is the artistic member of the partnership; he thinks up the ideas and designs and has pretensions to even greater artistry in his cherub lamps and fixtures. Moss, the seemingly quiet one who supplied the capital for the venture, manufactures them. Barry Unsworth sets his scene magnificently—a Cornish village, Lanruan, thriving on specious tourism, and its local characters: Graham, the primitive painter; Bailey, the loud-mouthed Northerner who comes to Lanruan to make his fortune; Barbara, the nearest thing the village possesses to a bad girl; and above all Gwendoline, who, inadvertently, begins the rift in the partnership between Foley and Moss. The Partnership is a disquieting, darkly funny tale about hidden desires and the unspoken attachments we have for one another.

In twelfth-century Norman Sicily, King Roger presides over Palermo in the aftermath of the Second Crusade. For the time being, Latins and Greeks, Arabs and Jews are living together in uneasy harmony. Within this milieu, young Thurstan Beauchamp serves faithfully as a civil servant of the king, his daily environment filled with tiny accountings, schemes, machinations, and bribes. When he is dispatched to investigate a conspiracy against the king, he will find his loyalties tested—and, when he encounters both his childhood sweetheart and a seductive dancer, his heart torn. An extraordinary tale of ambition, politics, and the loss of innocence, set against the glittering backdrop of medieval Europe, The Ruby in Her Navel powerfully traces the clash of civilizations from its historical origins, with deep resonances for today.

A brilliant retelling of an ancient myth, The Songs of the Kings offers up a different narrative of the Trojan War, one devoid of honor, wherein the mission to rescue Helen is a pretext for plundering Troy of its treasures. As the ships of the Greek fleet find themselves stalled in the straits at Aulis, waiting vainly for the gods to deliver more favorable winds, Odysseus cynically advances a call for the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter, Calchas the diviner interprets events for the reader, and a Homer-like figure called the Singer is persuaded to proclaim a tale of a just war to hide the corrupt motivations of those in power. But couched within the Singer’s spin is a message at once timely and timeless: “There is always another story. But it is the stories told by the strong, the songs of kings, that are believed in the end.”

Barry Unsworth ist mit dem ›Sklavenschiff‹ ein großer Roman gelungen, den die englische Kritik mit den berühmten Geschichten von Joseph Conrad verglichen hat. Auf hohem literarischen Niveau, exakt recherchiert, mit differenziertem Einfühlungsvermögen in Menschen und Zeitströmungen, ist dies der Roman einer widersprüchlichen Epoche und Gesellschaft, wie man ihn eindrucksvoller kaum lesen kann. (Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine frühere Ausgabe.)

A husband and wife attend a function at which they hope the husband will be made president of a large charity organisation. As the night wears on and the wife sees the husband do something rather shocking in public, she begins to question what really is important, as well as asking herself what is important in her marriage and their lives together, too.

It is the spring of 1767, and the vengeful Erasmus Kemp has had the mutinous sailors of his father’s ship brought back to London to stand trial on piracy charges. Much to Kemp’s dismay, the Irish fiddler Sullivan has escaped, and retrieving him proves too much in the midst of overseeing the dramatic legal case and a new business venture in the northern coal and steel industries of Thorpe. But the two men’s paths are about to collide once again, for Sullivan is also on his way to Thorpe to fulfill the dying wish of his shipmate. With historical sweep and deep pathos, Unsworth explores the struggles of the downtrodden against the rich and the powerful.

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 the slave trade and spread it throughout its colonies. Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain''s drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.

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 of that bloodshed. Unsworth''s contemporary invaders include the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity among the Umbrian hills, who are bilked out of their savings by the corrupt English "building expert" Stan Blemish; the Chapmans, a British property speculator and his wife, whose dispute with their neighbors over a wall escalates into a feud of nearly medieval proportions; Anders Ritter, a German haunted by the part his father played in a mass killing of Italian hostages in Rome during the Second World War; and Fabio and Arturo, a gay couple who, searching for peace and self-sufficiency, find treachery instead. And at the center of all these webs of deceit and greed is the cunning lawyer Mancini, happy to aid the disputants--and to exploit to the fullest the faith that these "innocents abroad" have placed in him.

"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 and mosts are crammed into a space so small," Barry Unsworth writes of the isle of Crete. Birthplace of the Greek god Zeus, the Greek alphabet, and the first Greek laws, as well as the home of 15 mountain ranges and the longest gorge in Europe, this land is indisputably unique. And since ancient times, its inhabitants have maintained an astonishing tenacity and sense of national identity, even as they suffered conquest and occupation by Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians, Ottoman Turks, and Germans. Throughout this evocative book, now in trade paper, Unsworth describes the incredible physical and cultural proportions of the island—in history, myth, and reality. Moving and artful, Crete gives readers a comprehensive picture and rich understanding of this complex—and indeed, almost magical—world of Mediterranean wonders. With the same keen eye and clear, eloquent prose that distinguishes his acclaimed historical novels, Barry Unsworth delivers his readers a two-fold traveler''s reward, at once a wonderfully detailed panorama of Crete''s many layers of history and an evocative portrait of an island almost literally larger than life.

Durante o reinado dos reis normandos, na Sicília do século XII, romanos, gregos, árabes e judeus convivem em harmonia. O jovem normando Thurstan Beauchamp trabalha para Yusuf, um muçulmano que controla as finanças do reino. Considerado um servo leal, Thurstan é destacado para desbaratar uma conspiração contra o rei. Em suas andanças, reencontra uma antiga paixão e conhece a misteriosa e sensual dançarina Nesrin. Thurstan se vê em uma verdadeira odisseia espiritual, na qual questiona a natureza de suas ambições e a insensatez da reverência pela autoridade real.

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. In Land of Marvels, a thriller set in 1914, he brings to life the schemes and double-dealings of Western nations grappling for a foothold in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Somerville, a British archaeologist, is excavating a long-buried Assyrian palace. The site lies directly in the path of a new railroad to Baghdad, and he watches nervously as the construction progresses, threatening to destroy his discovery. The expedition party includes Somerville’s beautiful, bored wife, Edith; Patricia, a smart young graduate student; and Jehar, an Arab man-of-all-duties whose subservient manner belies his intelligence and ambitions. Posing as an archaeologist, an American geologist from an oil company arrives one day and insinuates himself into the group. But he’s not the only one working undercover to stake a claim on Iraq’s rich oil fields. Historical fiction at its finest, Land of Marvels opens a window on the past and reveals its lasting impact.

Después de sorprendernos con ·La bailarina y el rubí", Barry Unsworth se atreve esta vez con el mito de Ifigenia. La historia de la hija de Agamenón permite a Unsworth recrear uno de los episodios iniciales de la Guerra de Troya. La trama arranca cuando, retenido en Áulide con toda su flota, el rey de Micenas, decide sacrificar a su hija para obtener así el favor de los dioses y lograr la victoria en Troya. Ifigenia, el inmortal personaje capaz de fascinar a artistas tan dispares como los pintores John Everett Millais o Frederick Leighton, escritores como Eurípides, Boccaccio o Racine y músicos como Christopher Gluck, es objeto de una nueva lectura que pone de manifiesto su radical modernidad.

A mediados del siglo XII, Palermo se había convertido en crisol de civilizaciones, razas, lenguas y religiones, donde musulmanes, judíos, griegos o normandos vivían en aparente armonía. Thurstan de Beauchamp, es hijo de una caballero normando pero trabaja para un musulmán al servicio del rey Rogelio de Sicilia; lleva años enamorado de lady Alicia, pero no podrá evitar caer en las redes de la bella bailarina Nesrin. Con el corazón dividido y en intenso debate interior, Thurstan se ve arrastrado a una perversa trama que amenza la vida de su mentor y de su rey en la que sólo uno saldrá indemne. Tensiones políticas y religiosas, erotismo, espionaje, soberbia recreación histórica, personajes fascinantes y una trama absorbente hacen de esta novela una lectural irresistible.

1149. Turstin, fils d''un chevalier normand, voit son destin contrarié. Il aurait lui aussi voulu porter les armes mais un revers de fortune paternel en a décidé autrement. À Palerme, le jeune homme est " pourvoyeur de plaisirs " à la cour de Roger de Hauteville, roi de Sicile. Bientôt, il se trouve partagé entre son amour d''enfance pour dame Alice - de retour de Terre sainte - et son attirance envers la sensuelle Nesrin, danseuse qu''il a fait venir à la cour. S''apercevra-t-il à temps que l''une des deux le manipule ? Qu''il est le jouet d''un complot menaçant le trône ? Se déroulant à une époque de croisades et de guerres de religion, le roman de Barry Unsworth témoigne d''une connaissance subtile de la Sicile médiévale.

In 14th Century England, a troupe of touring actors arrives in a town where a deaf-and-mute girl awaits execution for murder. They research the crime and perform a play that is closer to the truth than anyone imagined. When the local lord summons them to his castle for a private performance, they know they are in trouble. By the author of Pascali''s Island.