The Quality of Mercy

Here, immediately, you know that you are in the hands of a master . . . There are several strands to the novel, interwoven with rare artistry and assurance . . . Barry Unsworth does all this. The Quality of Mercy is the work of one who is both artist and craftsman. There is not a page without interest, not a sentence that rings false. It is gripping and moving, a novel about justice which is worthy of that theme. In short, it is a tremendous achievement, as good as anything this great novelist has written.

He is a historical novelist of a reliably old-fashioned sort: the writer who offers a plausible recreation of a bygone age and animates it with people whose motivations are consistent with the tenor of their time . . . the fact that his characters never turn into moral ciphers is one of his greatest strengths. [The Quality of Mercy] has all these qualities in spades

The big theme is power . . . Unsworth's 18th-century setting finds a correspondingly 18th-century feel in the fabric of his story: it is deeply sentimental, at time robustly comic . . . a silkily written potboiler, wonderfully well-realised, entirely engrossing.

Has all its predecessor's power to shock. This novel is immediately involving and immensely readable and may even be better than the [Booker-winning] earlier book.

This gripping novel . . . stands alone as yet another example of the author's extraordinary ability to turn dry history into dramatic narrative . . . With so much happening on the page that is dramatic and plot-based - the many different narrative threads eventually tie together in an entirely satisfying fashion - it could be easy to overlook the instances of quiet psychological transformation that give this novel its particular power.

Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in Durham. He was the author of many novels, including Pascali’s Island, which was shortlisted for the 1980 Booker Prize; Stone Virgin (1985); Sacred Hunger, which was joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize; Morality Play, which was shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize; Losing Nelson (1999); The Songs of the King (2002); The Ruby in Her Navel (2006); Land of Marvels (2009); and The Quality of Mercy (2011), which was shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Barry Unsworth died in 2012.

It is the spring of 1767, two years after the events of Barry Unsworth’s Booker Prize-winning novel Sacred Hunger. Erasmus Kemp, the son of a Liverpool slave ship owner, has had the rebellious sailors of his father’s ship brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. However, Sullivan, the Irish fiddler, has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing and scamming as he goes. 
 
In London, Kemp is looking to invest some of his fortune on Britain’s new industries: coal-mining and steel. When he receives a tip about some mines for sale in East Durham, Kemp sees the business opportunity he has been waiting for, and he too makes his way north, to the very same village that Sullivan is heading for…

Losing Nelson

It is accomplished, effective, exciting, and intelligent ... information is cunningly deployed, the pace is controlled: the mood of zealous desperation is heightened from page to page

Ingenious ... richly informative and sardonically entertaining

This truly excellent novel delves deep into the tragic side of hero-worship and heroism, and is a work of pathos and power

As the child of an absent mother and a disapproving father, Charles Cleasby found comfort in solitary games of chess. Many years later, in the house where he grew up and now lives alone, he re-enacts the naval battles of his hero Horatio Nelson, moving model ships as carefully as he once did chess pieces. 
 
Having long been convinced of a link between ‘this great man’s life and mine’, Charles, surrounded by his collection of Nelson memorabilia, begins work on his biography of the Admiral and is unsettled to find that Nelson may not be the perfect leader he’s always imagined. To doubt his hero’s integrity feels like a terrible betrayal, but if Nelson is not the man Charles thought he was, what does that mean for him?

Stone Virgin

Passionate, erotic and haunting, this is a brilliant novel by one of Britain's most important novelists.

A marvellous novel, beautifully written and compelling to read

A tour de force of informed, atmospheric writing ... an impressive, thought-provoking book

An enthralling exploration of time and of Venice and of the creative mind

A remarkable novel ... a superlative evocation of a Venice of murky calli ... a master stylist

For five hundred years a statue of the Madonna has watched over Venice. Now, dulled by time and pollution, she is prepared for restoration. As Simon Raikes immerses himself in the painstaking task of cleaning and repairing, he is inexorably drawn to the stories of violence and lust which have surrounded this stone virgin. 
 
Simon’s investigations lead him to Chiara Litsov, the wife of a renowned sculptor. A dangerous attraction develops between them and it appears inevitable that once again the stone virgin will bear witness to passion, betrayal and murder.

Land of Marvels

Booker-Prize winner Barry Unsworth returns with his finest book to date

Richly peopled, fast-moving, cleverly plotted, written with economy and elegance, this novel has the satisfying density and sweep of a book twice its length

Unsworth wraps his dark themes around a plot full of adventure and romance. Rifles are fired, locks are broken and necks are kissed in the midnight desert.

Reading this novel is like watching an Olympic athlete about to win the gold: the seamless flow of action, the mastery of technique, seemingly effortless yet demanding attention and eliciting admiration as an end in itself

The historical novel should do three things: make tangible the period in question; reflect it in to the modern world; and, like all novels, entertain. Barry Unsworth is a master of all three concerns ...

... Land of Marvels could easily have become a morality tale about greed and imperial ambitions. But Unsworth is too canny a storyteller for that. It is greed that triumphs in the end. And, though empires change, imperial ambitions prevail. Such grim reflections on the past are sobering, too, when considering the current predicament of Iraq

Tensions mount in the desert as spies and assassins join the cast of soldiers and archaeologists, and the story hurtles on towards its fiery denouement.

Unsworth is the most accomplished of novelists. All the characters are thoroughly imagined and ring true - even Jehar, convinced of the truth of his own lying rhetoric. As in all the best novels, characters reveal themselves in speech - and we see them as they present themselves to others. The plot moves faster as the novel gets into its stride. Unsworth, like Walter Scott, knows what is to be gained by an apparently languid introduction, scene-setting before the action takes over. He knows that credibility must first be established before action is significant. This is a cunningly put-together novel, in which the development of the plot advancing to an inexorable climax gains enormously from the deliberately leisurely opening.

A richly imagined novel squarely in the tradition of his Booker Prize triumph Sacred Hunger.

Unsworth moves lightly between his characters, as Somerville's explorations prove fruitful and a race to the finish line ensues. There's a great deal of tension but the prose stays cool - partly because he means to show us the value of the various prizes they covet.

Undertones of doom never silence the high notes of an elegantly dressed adventure yarn ... The plot, so delicately stitched, unravels - literally - in a flash ... As always with Unsworth, no moral lectures or glib ironies ensue. Rather we glimpse what happened to these folk (or those who survived) during and beyond the first global war. It ended with, among many other new-born nations, the Anglo French fabrication of the four-letter land whose name ends this compelling - and unsettling - book.

Unsworth is a spare and elegant writer, and his lean prose keeps perfect pace with the mounting tension as international players fight over the land. An unexpected page-turner that foreshadows the current turbulence in the Middle East.

Land of Marvels is a most intriguing fiction, as multi-layered and full of unexpected discoveries as the terrain so rich in narrative into which Somerville is so desperately burrowing. Unsworth's knowledge of his novel's historical and archaeological background is gracefully deployed, as are the parallels with the later conflict, which are never allowed to overshadow the vivid characterisation and elegant, intricate plotting by means of which the author pursues his real theme: the nature of stories that human beings tell themselves about the past, the present, and the future.

As you would expect from Barry Unsworth, the place and period are beautifully evoked and the plot gathers pace to a brilliant climax.

Land of Marvels is a novel about deception, greed and the restrictions of decorum, a time capsule reopened and a well-paced saga of broken family ties. It also offers an evocative glimpse at the lands that have since been reborn as Iraq.

Anyone familiar with Barry Unsworth's work will know the relish he takes in intrigue and subterfuge. Here, the entire cast is engaged in a kind of gavotte of dissembling, eagerly trying to outwit each other. This, as one might expect, is beautifully orchestrated, with everyone dancing to what they falsely believe to be their own tunes. And while the contemporary resonances of his story are plainly there - Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq, is being picked over by various self-interested outsiders keen to plunder its resources - they are never laboured.

He has a marvellously sinuous way of moving in and out of his characters points of view and styles of speech... neck-deep in spies, double- and triple-crosses, forbidden love and pistol-shots... Give yourself up and there's a clanking good read to be enjoyed.

A heady mix of history, politics and espionage.

Barry Unsworth - winner of the Booker Prize once, shortlisted twice - has a lot to live up to. In Land of Marvels he does so magnificently ... Lofty dreams and smash-and-grab capitalism are deftly woven together in precise and elegant prose.

Engaging and informative, with snappy dialogue and a fabulous, if slightly abrupt, ending.

Brilliant exploration of the tensions on an archaeological dig as the first world war looms.

The Sunday Times ‘100 Best Holiday Reads’

Land of Marvels offers a fluent plot peopled by sharp, affecting characters and graced with the author's usual erudite wit and understanding humour

[a] cleverly plotted and elegantly written novel...Unsworth has evidently done a great deal of research, but this is woven seamlessly into the fabric of the novel so that the reader is caught up in the excitement of Somerville's discoveries.

1914, and an English archaeologist called Somerville is fulfilling a lifelong dream: to direct an excavation in the desert of Mesopotamia. Yet forces beyond his control threaten his work. 
 
The Great War is looming, and various interest groups are vying for control over the land and its manyprizes. And Somerville, whose intention is purely to discover and preserve the land's ancient treasures finds his idealism sorely tested. Naked ambition, treachery and greed are at play, in a thrilling adventure from the master of the historical novel.

Sacred Hunger

Barry Unsworth won the Booker Prize with SACRED HUNGER and has been shortlisted for PASCALI'S ISLAND and MORALITY PLAY. He is author of many other acclaimed novels. Originally from Durham he now lives in Italy.

WINNER OF THE 1992 BOOKER PRIZE 
 
'Gripping . . . SACRED HUNGER covers a period between 1752 and 1765 . . . it concerns the entangled and conflicted fortunes of two cousins: Erasmus Kemp, the son of a Lancashire merchant, and Matthew Paris, a scholar and surgeon just released from prison for "denying Holy Writ" . . . the Liverpool Merchant is the vessel on which the whole of the novel hinges, and it carries the reader deep into the history of man's iniquitous greed . . . AS REGARDS ITS DRAMATIC BREADTH AND ENERGY, NO RECENT DOMESTIC NOVEL HAS COME WITHIN A MILE OF IT' - Anthony Quinn in the Independent

Barry Unsworth

Brilliant … The ending is thrilling and unexpected, though nothing is beyond belief in this beautifully constructed, illuminating novel.

A brilliant book … The sights and sounds, the physical impact of bedraggled play-acting, are unforgettable. And the strange birth of modern drama, on a cart carrying dirty costumes and a corpse, is memorably exciting.

Wonderfully vivid … this bleakly glittering novel … adds to its already impressive array of attractions the pace, suspense and twisty unexpectedness of a gripping detective tale.

From the first, vital sentence, Unsworth’s medieval drama grips the reader’s attention … exquisite.

It is the late fourteenth century, a dangerous time beset by war and plague. Nicholas Barber, a young and wayward cleric, stumbles across a group of travelling players and compounds his sins by joining them. 
 
Yet the town where they perform reveals another drama: a young woman is to be hanged for the murder of a twelve-year-old boy. What better way to increase their takings than to make a new play, to enact the murder of Thomas Wells? But as the actors rehearse, they discover that the truth about the boy's death has yet to be revealed...

Barry Unsworth

Praise for Morality Play

Brilliant … The ending is thrilling and unexpected, though nothing is beyond belief in this beautifully constructed, illuminating novel.

A brilliant book … The sights and sounds, the physical impact of bedraggled play-acting, are unforgettable. And the strange birth of modern drama, on a cart carrying dirty costumes and a corpse, is mem ...

Wonderfully vivid … this bleakly glittering novel … adds to its already impressive array of attractions the pace, suspense and twisty unexpectedness of a gripping detective tale.

Brilliant … The ending is thrilling and unexpected, though nothing is beyond belief in this beautifully constructed, illuminating novel.

A brilliant book … The sights and sounds, the physical impact of bedraggled play-acting, are unforgettable. And the strange birth of modern drama, on a cart carrying dirty costumes and a corpse, is mem ...

Wonderfully vivid … this bleakly glittering novel … adds to its already impressive array of attractions the pace, suspense and twisty unexpectedness of a gripping detective tale.

Brilliant … The ending is thrilling and unexpected, though nothing is beyond belief in this beautifully constructed, illuminating novel.

A brilliant book … The sights and sounds, the physical impact of bedraggled play-acting, are unforgettable. And the strange birth of modern drama, on a cart carrying dirty costumes and a corpse, is mem ...

Wonderfully vivid … this bleakly glittering novel … adds to its already impressive array of attractions the pace, suspense and twisty unexpectedness of a gripping detective tale.

Books by Barry Unsworth

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