Hannibal Rising

by Thomas Harris

Book Overview

He is one of the most haunting characters in all of literature. At last the evolution of his evil is revealed. Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him. Hannibal's uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle's beautiful...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 044024286X
• ISBN13: 9780440242864
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Dell
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Missing 61 pages

I love this book as a whole, my original copy was never returned to me so I bought a new one. Upon reading it however I was disappointed to find that it was missing information, after some digging I figured out it had less pages then all other conventional copy's. Pretty bummed about it honestly.

Great!

This may be my favorite book of the series!

Muy bueno

Muy buen libro para terminar de entender las motivaciones de Hanibal. Nos muestra de manera entretenida la juventud de Hanibal, asi como también a Misha, de quien ya sabíamos en el libro Hannibal del mismo autor.

Enough Harris bashing! This is a great book!

From some of the reviews, you'd probably seriously be wondering how it is that the character of Hannibal Lecter ever came to be icon he is today. Make no mistake, this book -- like Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal before it -- is really good. It tells the story of the making of a monster. For those emerging from a cave, Hannibal Lecter is the creation of Thomas Harris, former crime writer, who appeared in both Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal (not to mention Red Dragon, wherein he played a bit part) and was played so memorably by Anthony Hopkins. Called Hannibal the Cannibal, Lecter was a psychiatrist whose surgical precision in understanding the psyche was matched by his surgical proclivity of dissecting and consuming those whose behavior displeased him. In this entry, Harris purports biographically to give answer to the question of why Lecter became. Perhaps in the end it is this effort that has warranted Harris some of his negative reviews. In horror as in life, nothing is more terrifying than the unopened door. Buried deep in the disappointment of some reviews is not the idea of this explanation but the fact of any explanation for Lecter being Lecter. However, that ignores the quality of this explanation. In talking about Lecter and his childhood on the Russian front, Harris has told a really good story. Being caught between Germany and Russia was a nightmare for those who were forced to live it. The local partisans who sprung up were a fact of life. And maybe it is amazing that the carnage and yes cannibalism that ensued did not produce a Hannibal Lecter (at least that we know of). So in the end Harris produced a book all the more terrifying not because Hannibal Lecter is fiction but because -- as seen through these pages -- he was and remains as real as the history he was sprung from.

There are two perspectives of this amazing/disappointing book...

Those who relished the author's previous works may find this book insufficiently hair-raising - and that's the genre in which Harris has set grim precedents and collected millions of bloodthirsty fans. But anyone who reads this book without knowledge of its predecessors will be amazed, delighted, stunned, and sorry that it ends. It's not only an incredibly detailed tutorial on some of the more horrific aspects of World War Two in Europe, it's also a superb novel.

Another masterpiece from a true wordsmith.

Hey "naysayers": I'll bet you liked "Hannibal" the movie better than the book, too. Surely you jest. Thomas Harris has again proved a mastery of image and language that makes his mention in the same breath as King, Niven, Preston or Kozol a necessity. Laying the psychological groundwork for the mind of Hannibal Lecter, this book still makes for reading at a sitting. I did. My only regret is that I am of the generation that read "Red Dragon," "Silence of the Lambs," and "Hannibal" before "Hannibal Rising." For future readers, that will truly be an experience in modern literature. It is a shame that the saga has ended, but then, where else could it have gone? The circle is now closed. BRAVO, Harris.

An unexpected pleasure

Fans of Thomas Harris's crime thrillers will very likely be disappointed by Hannibal Rising. This novel is no Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon, but what it is, is quite wonderful: a chilling look at the origins of obsession and madness. Part Kill Bill, part Heart of Darkness, Harris's latest novel traces how child aristocrat Hannibal Lecter, eighth of that name and last of his line, became Hannibal the Cannibal, nightmare of millions. In seeking revenge for the death of his sister, Hannibal loses himself. Or perhaps he doesn't--as the author himself muses, perhaps he simply unleashes what had always been there, waiting in the dark. Hannibal Rising is a deeply satisfying experience for those, like me, who have long loved the character and wished to know more about him. Harris's prose is as spare and beautiful as the Japanese poetry he intersperses throughout his work, and while the novel does take longer to get going than his earlier narratives, the final outcome is well worth the wait. The one flaw I found--and I believe it was mentioned by another reviewer here--is that Lecter's polydactyly has apparently been forgotten. Harris seems to grow a bit hazy on facts between sequels--recall Clarice Starling's siblings in Silence, who had disappeared even from memory by the time of Hannibal. But these are minor quibbles: Thomas Harris always gets the feeling right, even if a few facts disappear down oubliettes along the way. Taken as what it is--a gripping psychological portrait, not a crime procedural--Hannibal Rising is a worthy addition to the Lecter canon. I can only hope Harris retains enough interest in his greatest creation to one day provide us with the final chapter, those missing years between Rising and Red Dragon.