After Hannibal - Softcover

Barry, Unsworth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393317706 ISBN 13: 9780393317701

Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1998

Synopsis

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Sacred Hunger, "a vivid, sinuous, profound, and entirely beguiling venture." -Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times. Set in the beautiful landscape and rich history of Umbria, Italy, Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth has written a witty and illuminating work of contemporary manners and morals. The region where Hannibal defeated the Romans is now prey to a different type of invasion: outsiders buying villas with innocent and not so innocent dreams. Among those clustered along one hillside road are the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity; the Chapmans, whose dispute over a wall escalates into a feud of operatic proportions; and Fabio and Arturo, a gay couple who, searching for peace and self-sufficiency, find treachery instead. Add to this mix a wily and corrupt British "building expert," and a lawyer who practices subterfuge and plans his client's actions like military strategy, and you have a sharp, entertaining, and satisfyingly bittersweet work.

About this title

About the Author:

Barry Unsworth (1930-2012), who won the Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger, was a Booker Prize finalist for Morality Play and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize for The Ruby in Her Navel.

From the Inside Flap:

th, the Booker Prize-winning author of Sacred Hunger and the bestselling Morality Play, returns in top form with this worldly, bittersweet comedy of manners and morals set in one of Italy's most glorious--and historically treacherous--regions.

Golden Umbria is home to breathtaking scenery and great art; it is also where Hannibal and his invading band of Carthaginians ambushed and slaughtered a Roman legion, and where the local place-names still speak of that bloodshed.

Unsworth's contemporary invaders include the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity among the Umbrian hills, who are bilked out of their savings by the corrupt English "building expert" Stan Blemish; the Chapmans, a British property speculator and his wife, whose dispute with their neighbors over a wall escalates into a feud of nearly medieval proportions; Anders Ritter, a German haunted by the part his father played in a mass killing of Italian hostages in Rome d

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0393317706
• ISBN 13: 9780393317701
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272