Barry Unsworth evokes a distant past filled with deception and mystery, whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today.
Barry Unsworth’s gripping historical novel about the Atlantic slave trade shared the 1992 Booker Prize with Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
Outcast Matthew Paris boards the Liverpool Merchant as ship’s doctor on a slave trade voyage. Illness breaks out, and slaves are ordered to be tossed overboard. Mutiny ensues and, with Paris as one of the leaders, the ship sails for Florida to establish an egalitarian society. Meanwhile, the loss of the ship has ruined its owner, Kemp, who hangs himself. Twelve years later, upon hearing rumours of a utopian interracial community in Florida, Kemp’s son sets out for revenge.
Barry Unsworth
About the Author
Barry Unsworth was born in London. He published 17 novels, and is best known for his historical fiction.Other nominated books by Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth’s detective story set in the 14th century, a time of calamity such as few others have been, marked by war, plague and fear of hellfire.
Barry Unsworth’s complex study of betrayal, paranoia, deception and fear, delivered by Pascali himself – an altogether untrustworthy narrator.
