Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Added to your cart
Paperback Sacred Hunger Book

ISBN: 0525434119

ISBN13: 9780525434115

Sacred Hunger

(Book #1 in the Sacred Hunger Series)

Select Format

Select Condition ThriftBooks Help Icon

Recommended

Format: Paperback

Condition: Acceptable

$6.29
Save $12.66!
List Price $18.95
Almost Gone, Only 3 Left!

Book Overview

Winner of the Booker Prize Liverpool, 1752. William Kemp has lost a fortune in cotton speculation, and must recoup his losses if his son is to marry the wealthy woman whom he loves. His last resort is a slave ship, one that will take him to the Guinea coast, where he will trade for human cargo, then embark on the infamous Middle Passage. When disease ravages the ship and the African prisoners mutiny, William's profit-seeking venture falls apart. Slaves and sailors alike will join together to found a utopian community on the coast of Florida--not knowing that the vengeful, younger Kemp is in pursuit. Unsworth's tour de force is a profound meditation on the sacred hunger--the greed--couched within human nature, animating the slave trade. It is a novel that transcends its setting, illuminating larger truths that resonate to this day.

Customer Reviews

10 customer ratings | 5 reviews

Rated 5 stars
Unforgettable

When I had the opportunity to read Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger," I jumped at the chance, and not because this author won the Booker Prize. I didn't know a thing about him, had never heard of him, and couldn't have cared if he had won any prize related to writing. All I knew was that I could receive credit for a directed readings class at my university for reading the novel. The topic I was working on at the time concerned...

0Report

Rated 5 stars
The brass button

Make no mistake about it, reading Sacred Hunger is a significant undertaking -- both in terms of the impact this complex and epic story will have on you and because of the time and concentration it will take to navigate the book's more than 600 pages. That significance is something to savor.I will avoid the cliché of saying that the story "has it all," but Sacred Hunger does come close to that. There's the adventure of a band...

0Report

Rated 5 stars
The Hunger That Never Dies

This is one of the most painful books I have ever read, and my action of mailing copies to my closest friends is both an action of great friendship and great sadism. This story of the slave-trade and a new society formed after one slave-ship escapes -- through sickness, mutiny, opportunity -- pains as much as it pleases. Characters we live with and love are hunted down by characters who see them only as animals. We...

0Report

Rated 5 stars
Magnificently compelling, beautifully drawn

Barry Unsworth's novel Sacred Hunger is an exquisitely crafted tale of commerce and corruption set in 18th century England, at the heart of which lies the tension between the moral characters of two cousins. Erasmus Kemp is the intense, arrogant son of a slave ship owner, who holds the prevailing opinion of the day that the lawful accumulation of wealth is the only way a man should live his life. Mathew Paris is the...

0Report

Rated 5 stars
Breathtaking

I read this book about three years ago, and some of the passages are still etched vividly in my mind. The writing in amazingly lush. As some reviewers have already pointed out, there is a great deal of detail in some of the passages which, in lesser hands, could be terribly boring (Like in Millhauser's "Martin Dressler"). But here, they are magical. This is one of the few books where I would actually stop periodically...

0Report

Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured