# Sacred Hunger

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/barry-unsworth/sacred-hunger/9780140119930

![Sacred Hunger](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/barry-unsworth/sacred-hunger_978-01-4011-993-0.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2001%3A17%3A06)

- Book: [Sacred Hunger](https://www.bookquiver.com/barry-unsworth/sacred-hunger) ([Sacred Hunger.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/barry-unsworth/sacred-hunger.md))
- Authors: [Barry Unsworth](https://www.bookquiver.com/barry-unsworth)
- Publisher: Penguin
- ISBN: 978-01-4011-993-0
- Pages: 640
- Published: 2008-08-28
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

WINNER OF THE 1992 BOOKER PRIZE 'Gripping . . . SACRED HUNGER covers a period between 1752 and 1765 . . . it concerns the entangled and conflicted fortunes of two cousins: Erasmus Kemp, the son of a Lancashire merchant, and Matthew Paris, a scholar and surgeon just released from prison for " denying Holy Writ" . . . the Liverpool Merchant is the vessel on which the whole of the novel hinges, and it carries the reader deep into the history of man's iniquitous greed . . . AS REGARDS ITS DRAMATIC BREADTH AND ENERGY, NO RECENT DOMESTIC NOVEL HAS COME WITHIN A MILE OF IT' - Anthony Quinn in the Independent