Barry Unsworth - Sacred Hunger

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‘Sacred Hunger’ is Barry Unsworth’s finest novel yet. Powerful and wide-reaching in scope, it also articulates current concerns of corruption and distress.

It is 1752, a time of expanding opportunities and quick profit. But what place is there for business ethics when the commodity in question is human beings?

On a wave of optimism the  Liverpool Merchant sets sail, her owner and her captain greedily anticipating the easy money to be had from the buying and selling of African slaves, her crew seduced by visions of Africa and the hot, lewd women awaiting them. But once the trading is over, disease spreads through the cramped cargo, taking the profits with it. Just as dangerously, the crew is riven by malaise and dark speculations, which prove to be as contagious as physical sickness. In a desperate attempt to stem the flow of death, Captain Thurso throws the sickliest slaves overboard - an intolerable act of barbarity, which brings its own bloody consequences.

The novel tells of the bitterness between two cousins, whose destinies become consumed by the eventual fate of the Liverpool Merchant and her precious cargo. Matthew Paris is the experienced and haunted ship’s doctor. Erasmus Kemp, son of the ship’s owner, has very different doubts and ghosts to contend with.

Defying any easy conclusions, Barry Unsworth writes of poverty of spirit and the richness of hope. ‘Sacred Hunger’ is a magnificent novel and a classic exploration of moral choices, of the corruptions of greed and material gain and of men’s behavior in extremis.