Most Popular Books by Barry Unsworth

A New York Times Notable Book In medieval England, a runaway scholar-priest named Nicholas Barber has joined a traveling theater troupe as they make their way toward their liege lord’s castle. In need of money, they decide to perform at a village en route. When their traditional morality plays fail to garner them an audience, they begin to stage the “the play of Thomas Wells”—their own depiction of the real-life drama unfolding within the village around the murder of a young boy. The villagers believe they have already identified the killer, and the troupe believes their play will be a straightforward depiction of justice served. But soon the players soon learn that the details of the crime are elusive, and the lines between performance and reality become blurred as they discover, scene by scene, line by line, what really happened. Thought-provoking and unforgettable, Morality Play is at once a masterful work of historical fiction, a gripping murder mystery, and a literary work of the first order.

This early work by 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. When a good-looking gardener begins work at their estate, the two women of the household find themselves falling under the potent spell of his strength and seeming innocence.

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.

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 run amok. He is convinced that Nelson—Britain''s greatest admiral, who finally defeated Napoleon, and lost his own life, in the Battle of Trafalgar—is the perfect hero, but in his research he has come upon an incident of horrifying brutality in Nelson''s military career that simply stumps all attempts at glorification.

"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.

Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, this work is a tale in which the conflicts of the past portend the present. Unsworth transports the reader to a distant past filled with deception and mystery, and whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still present.

Donald Cuthbertson prided himself on being a model for his students and teachers, but he had lately begun to lose his focus. Degree Day is approaching, along with a birthday party for his wife, Lavinia, who is not going quietly into middle age. Her lavish costume party provides the revelers with a darkly comic resolution to romantic dalliance and political intrigue.

In 1908 Englishman Robert Markham is appointed to the British legation in Turkey.

A "powerfully done" ("Times Literary Supplement") and tantalizingly semi-autobiographical novel from the author of the Booker Prize-winning "Sacred Heart".

As Simon Raikes restores a fifteenth-century Venetian masterpiece, he becomes obsessed with the sculpture, becoming involved in a crime as he reconstructs the past and is drawn into the mysteries of love, betrayal, and violence.

"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.

“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 trapped in the straits at Aulis, frustration and political impotence turn into a desire for the blood of a young and innocent woman – blood that will appease the gods and allow the troops to set sail. And when Iphigeneia, Agamemnon’s beloved daughter, is brought to the coast under false pretences, and when a knife is fashioned out of the finest and most precious of materials, it looks as if the ships will soon be on their way. But can a father really go to these lengths to secure political victory, and can a daughter willingly give up her life for the worldly ambitions of her father? Throwing off the heroic values we expect of them, Barry Unsworth’s mythic characters embrace the political ethos of the twenty-first century and speak in words we recognize as our own. The blowhard Odysseus warns the men to not “marginalize” Agamemnon and to “strike while the bronze is hot.” High-sounding principles clash with private motives, and dark comedy ensues. Here is a novel that stands the world on its head.

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. It is the spring of 1767, and to avenge his father''s death, Erasmus Kemp has had the rebellious sailors of his father''s ship, including Sullivan, brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. But as the novel opens, a blithe Sullivan has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing as he goes and sleeping where he can. His destination is Thorpe in the East Durham coalfields, where his dead shipmate, Billy Blair, lived: he has pledged to tell the family how Billy met his end. In this village, Billy''s sister, Nan, and her miner husband, James Bordon, live with their three sons, all destined to follow their father down the pit. The youngest, only seven, is enjoying his last summer aboveground. Meanwhile, in London, a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, gets involved in a second case relating to the lost ship. Erasmus Kemp wants compensation for the cargo of sick slaves who were thrown overboard to drown, and Ashton is representing the insurers who dispute his claim. Despite their polarized views on slavery, Ashton''s beautiful sister, Jane, encounters Erasmus Kemp and finds herself powerfully attracted to him. Lord Spenton, who owns coal mines in East-Durham, has extravagant habits and is pressed for money. When he applies to the Kemp merchant bank for a loan, Erasmus sees a business opportunity of the kind he has long been hoping for, a way of gaining entry into Britain''s rapidly developing and highly profitable coal and steel industries. Thus he too makes his way north, to the very same village that Sullivan is heading for . . . With historical sweep and deep pathos, Unsworth explores the struggles of the powerless and the captive against the rich and the powerful, and what weight mercy may throw on the scales of justice.

In this edgy and masterfully written novel, Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth explores the themes of the corruption of innocence and the complications of lust. Farnaby, a young Englishman in Istanbul researching a thesis on Ottoman fiscal policy, is nervous at his reunion with the celebrated Mooncranker who once so fatefully influenced and disturbed his life. Mooncranker, a famous intellectual, is now a pitiful alcoholic deserted by his secretary and lover Miranda—the woman Farnaby secretly loved with the violence of youth. Mooncranker sends him to find Miranda at a notorious Turkish spa on the grounds of an ancient city where sex is known to come along with the price of the room. There Farnaby tries to understand Mooncranker''s gift to him as a boy of thirteen, which has tainted his life ever since, as he finds himself a pivotal figure in the eccentric destinies of the other residents of the spa.

Two men traveling from England disembark in Greece from the same boat. How their lives will accidentally and frighteningly intersect is the subject of this novel. Kennedy, an Englishman of no fixed address, is looking for a teaching job in what he hopes will be a Greek paradise. An opportunist who finds himself falling in love - or at least lust - he orchestrates a scam that will have some intended - and some thoroughly unintended - consequences. Mitsos is returning to Greece after many years away. An unresolved family tragedy awakens again, from the ghosts of his parents'' deaths and the brutal wartime politics of Greek against Greek.

In 1752 the "Liverpool Merchant" sets sail, her owner and her captain greedily anticipating the easy money to be had from the buying and selling of African slaves. Her crew are seduced by visions of Africa and the hot, lewd women awaiting them. Once the trading is over, disease spreads through the cramped cargo, taking the profits with it. Enraged at the captain''s impotence in the face of disease, the crew discuss a mutiny that will pit two cousins against each other.