Product Description

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 and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki. Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal.With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. But Hannibal's demons visit him and torment him.When he is old enough, he visits them in turn. He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death's prodigy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116087 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-05
• Released on: 2006-12-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 337 pages

Amazon.co.uk
Thomas Harris remains both the progenitor of the modern serial killer novel – and its greatest exponent. Red Dragon was the first appearance of the murderous Hannibal Lecter, and with its success, the Harris imitators burgeoned almost immediately. The Silence of the Lambs, however, moved Harris into really rarefied heights, its achievement boltered by the addition of a strongly drawn heroine, trainee FBI agent Clarice Starling. Hannibal, the last outing for Harris’ monstrous Lecter, drew a more controversial response, with Clarice Sterling locked into a bizarre relationship with her cultivated predator, and it looked as if the next book would develop that grim scenario.

However, Hannibal Rising goes in a totally unexpected direction – in effect, it’s a prequel to the earlier books, returning to Lecter’s childhood in World War’s Eastern Front. The youthful Hannibal sees his family murdered by the Nazis. But something else happens which alters (and deforms) Hannibal’s psyche forever. The boy moves to Paris with the beautiful Japanese widow of his last surviving relative. And soon, an orgy of grisly revenge is in train, wrought on some opponents almost as nasty as Lecter is to become himself.

We’ve seen this before: Hannibal murdering people quite as ruthless as he is – whether this makes the operatic bloodshed satisfying is a matter for every individual reader. Whatever your stance, the effect of Harris’ prose is, as ever, utterly irresistible.

Hannibal Rising is comparatively uncomplicated, when set against the complex, richly textured Harris novels that came before it.

Is there a danger that in showing us how Hannibal became a monster, something is lost of his terrifying mystery? As if to deal with this possibility, Harris keeps Lecter unknowable by removing his customary articulate examination of this own motives (he is still a boy, after all). But the tale of bloody vengeance has a forward trajectory that (whatever your reservations) will render this is a one (or two) sitting reading. And the next book will, surely, recapture that richer Harris texture. --Barry Forshaw

Review
"* Quite simply a compelling and brilliant thriller.' - Daily Mirror * 'The thrills, horror, sly erudition and sheer exquisite writing make this so much more than another serial killer novel... [It] reaches almost sublime levels of gothic grandeur at its conclusion. If only all bestsellers were so rewarding.' - Guardian * 'A masterpiece... Chillingly brilliant' - Observer * 'Quite simply this is the best-written thriller to dominate the market in years... A literary evocation of the diabolical to compare with Goethe and Gogol. Honestly.' - The Times * 'A gut-churning, nail-biting, skin-crawling, often lyrical triumph - addictive on every level' - Daily Express"

The Sunday Times
`...as Hannibal goes on his fiendishly imaginative rampage, the pace picks up, one turns the pages faster, time flies, and one is sorry that there aren't more pages to turn'.

Customer Reviews

Harris Rises; The Wound Man waits in the wings
I don't think I've ever seen a book bagged as savagely on Amazon as this - so much so that, despite having pre-ordered and received my copy, I almost didn't bother to read it.

what a pleasant surprise, then to find a beautifully crafted, clever, literary novel, developing ever further one of the most complex characters of modern fiction, packed full of the same metaphor and figure as was Hannibal - a further stage in Thomas Harris' development from author of intelligent thrillers to a proper, literary, writer. Unlike most people, I liked Hannibal, but thought it was a bit baroque for its own good. With Hannibal Rising, Thomas Harris has kept the melody, but cut the ornamentation down to a plainsong.

The character Hannibal Lecter's progress from his walk-on part in Red Dragon is intriguing: Thomas Harris can scarcely have expected, let alone intended, that a character seemingly named for the sake of a cheesy rhyme would, er, consume thirty years of his professional life. In Red Dragon Hannibal Lecter was mostly a bogeyman (at that point he displayed the classic psychopathic trait of childhood cruelty to animals - which has long since been revised into an uncommon affinity for assorted birds and horses): only in the novel Hannibal did Harris really begin to extend a figure who transpired to be more supernatural than human (there are unmistakable resonances of Dracula) and not really immoral at all. Perhaps this is Harris' most shocking initiative of all: A heartless psychopath, via a preference for eating only the rude, is now given a full moral basis and, what's more, we're on his side as he wields the knife. That's a pretty subversive shift in perspective, and Harris has executed it without us even realising what he was up to. Yet people still complain.

The heart quickens briefly in the suspense, but mostly that's not what Harris is interested in, and nor can he really go to town since, by definition, we know what the outcome will be: Hannibal must survive, and given his superhuman faculties it is difficult to believe he is in any real danger throughout.

What Thomas Harris is more interested in is the figurative devices through which he explores his doppelganger and by which he binds him to the existing canon. For those who bemoaned the lack of the writer's craft in this book I can only suggest you read it again, for barely a word is wasted, and Harris' writing is as deft and lyrical here as ever I've read it. There are no accidents, and it is not one that evil is personified by the "totenkopf" (or "death's head") insignia, nor that unspeakable slaughter of innocents once again takes place in a barn, just as it did in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal (now we have a full circle: by rescuing Catherine, Starling has stopped her lambs screaming, and by avenging Mischa, Hannibal has stopped his). Every sentence is stuffed with allusions to the senses, and particularly smells, and sparks (such as those in Hannibal's maroon eyes) are a constant presence.

The best news is that - albeit another decade away, there is clearly more to come: Will Graham has been the most interesting and complicated of Lecter's antagonists, and it can be no accident that Harris has saved the most fascinating period of both of their lives - between Lecter's arrival in Baltimore and his only proper apprehension by Graham - for last. We have yet to find out what happened to Benjamin Raspail and Mason Verger, and Harris has positioned himself nicely to finish the cycle with the police procedural which most of his fans, judging by this site, seem to crave above all else.

Olly Buxton

"Yum."
The story of young Hannibal Lecter begins as his family is rushing around, packing their valuables, preparing to leave their castle and flee the oncoming German soldiers. Hannibal, age 8, his beloved little sister, and their parents escape to their hunting lodge hidden deep in the Lithuanian forest, where they survive for three years, until they are discovered by ruthless mercenaries. Hannibal witnesses the deaths of his loved ones, so hideously cruel that he is unable to speak for years afterward. An uncle brings him to live in Paris, where the withdrawn little boy becomes a cultured and diabolically brilliant young man, intent on finding the men who killed his family and getting his revenge.

Hannibal's experiences during the war are so traumatic that it was difficult to read at times, but the gory pay-back had me silently cheering. The narrative is written in pitiless prose; the most unspeakable atrocities described indifferently, the way Hannibal sees them. The story is very good and it's a quick read. If you don't mind abject cruelty, this explanation of Hannibal's madness can be quite satisfying.

Beautifully written but not quite Silence of the lambs
I was eagerly awaiting Hannibal rising and delighted to receive it for Christmas.

The whole novel is beautifully written. The language and prose are more deliberate and polished than any of the previous books. Every sentence is crafted with care and style.

The basic story is good, telling the tale of Hannibal as he matures from a young boy to a young man. He is depicted from the start as fearless and highly intelligent but also polite and likable. The story explains how the massive potential for violence within him was sparked and cultivated.

It also traces several subplots including developing his artistic talent, his thirst for knowledge and his complex romantic feelings towards his uncle's wife.

Fairly early on in the novel Hannibal experiences a violent and horrific event, which he subconsciously blocks out of his memory. A big part of the rest of the book involves Hannibal working hard to recover these events by whatever means necessary and getting revenge for them against some truly evil characters.

The book doesn't have the same heart pounding pace as the magnificent silence of the lambs but works very well in it's own right.

It also starts to develop Hannibal's character. We see him behave as he does through the other books, his hunger for culture and deep respect of people who are polite and thoughtful human beings and his deep disdain of those who aren't. Plus the extreme prejudice with which he deals with those he sees as deserving of his disdain. It also takes us through the inception of his memory palace, which was explored quite deeply in Hannibal.

One thing that disappointed me slightly about this book was its concept. Silence of the lambs made a big point of Hannibal telling Clarice that he was not created that he was not abused as a child he simply was what he was. I liked that unexplainable air of mystery. Then Hannibal Rising steps in and explains exactly how he was shaped to become the Man or some would say Monster that he is in all the other novels.

But all in all a good read. I recommend it but don't expect it to be as good as Silence of the lambs.