Sacred Hunger
by Barry Unsworth | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0385265301 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0385265301 Global Overview for this book
1 journaler for this copy...
For many months now, I've been hoping to getting around to reading Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, the 1992 Booker Prize Winner. This historical novel about the 18th Century slave trade. From the back cover:
Barry Unsworth, whose novels Pascali's Island and Stone Virgin, among others, have materfully brought to life exotic locales of the past, now plumbs the depths of one of history's greatest tragedies: the inhumanity sanctified in the name of greed that was the slave trade. It is 1752. A Liverpool merchant, William Kemp, enticed by the high profits to be made as a slaver, builds and fits a ship and recruits a crew--through the chicanery and press gangs that at the time intimidated society's unfortunate. Among the crew is handsome Matthew Paris, a surgeon who is also Kemp's nephew. Paris has recently been released from prison, where he served a sentence for defending free speech; his young wife and child have died; and he believes his employment as a ship's doctor to be in keeping with his degradation. To Kemp's son Erasmus, who hopes to inherit his father's fortune and enter respectable society, Paris has brought only shame to the family.
Once the ship has picked up its human cargo in Africa and heads for the New World, unforeseen events ensue. Disease spreads, forcing the ship's unscrupulous captain to take drastic measures to reduce its toll. The crew mutines, takes over the ship, and brings it to the east coast of Florida--a trackless wilderness still owned by the Spanish. Here, in the region that will one day be known as Miami, the survivors--white and black, freemen and former slaves--establish a secret community. Beginning life anew, Matthew Paris finds a kind of salvation until, in the astounding climax to this rich and engrossing novel, he must confront the resentful passion of Erasmus Kemp.
Barry Unsworth, whose novels Pascali's Island and Stone Virgin, among others, have materfully brought to life exotic locales of the past, now plumbs the depths of one of history's greatest tragedies: the inhumanity sanctified in the name of greed that was the slave trade. It is 1752. A Liverpool merchant, William Kemp, enticed by the high profits to be made as a slaver, builds and fits a ship and recruits a crew--through the chicanery and press gangs that at the time intimidated society's unfortunate. Among the crew is handsome Matthew Paris, a surgeon who is also Kemp's nephew. Paris has recently been released from prison, where he served a sentence for defending free speech; his young wife and child have died; and he believes his employment as a ship's doctor to be in keeping with his degradation. To Kemp's son Erasmus, who hopes to inherit his father's fortune and enter respectable society, Paris has brought only shame to the family.
Once the ship has picked up its human cargo in Africa and heads for the New World, unforeseen events ensue. Disease spreads, forcing the ship's unscrupulous captain to take drastic measures to reduce its toll. The crew mutines, takes over the ship, and brings it to the east coast of Florida--a trackless wilderness still owned by the Spanish. Here, in the region that will one day be known as Miami, the survivors--white and black, freemen and former slaves--establish a secret community. Beginning life anew, Matthew Paris finds a kind of salvation until, in the astounding climax to this rich and engrossing novel, he must confront the resentful passion of Erasmus Kemp.
Journal Entry 2 by 
Cordelia-anne
at -- Wild released somewhere in the state, Georgia USA on Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Cordelia-anne at -- Wild released somewhere in the state, Georgia USA on Tuesday, January 20, 2015
I have been meaning to read this interesting Booker Prize Winner for nearly ten years. It is time for this book to travel to another reader. Perhaps I'll pick it up later. As Michel de Montaigne observed, the eyes can be bigger than the stomach.
