How long is it?
656 pages in the W. W. Norton & Company 1993 paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction
Sacred Hunger
Highly regardedBooker Prize, 1992Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 70 / 100High
- Length
- 656 pagesW. W. Norton & Company · 1993
- Reading time
- 13 hat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 5 / 5
About 13 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 27 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
In Liverpool in 1752, William Kemp finances a slave-trading voyage to recover his losses from cotton speculation, while his son Erasmus looks to its profits to secure a wealthy marriage. Kemp’s nephew Matthew Paris, a physician recently imprisoned for challenging religious orthodoxy, joins the Liverpool Merchant as surgeon. As Erasmus pursues his ambitions at home, Paris encounters Captain Thurso’s brutal discipline and the business of buying and transporting enslaved people.
Reader notes
Deliberately paced and rich in period detail, the historical novel alternates between Liverpool and the ship, following sailors as well as those financing the voyage. Its treatment of greed is searching and often disturbing, and the violence and abuse of slavery are described plainly.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Dense · Descriptive · Witty
- Tone
- Dark · Humorous · Philosophical · Unsettling
- Structure
- Braided · Linear
- Driven by
- Character · Ideas · Worldbuilding
- Point of view
- Multiple viewpoints · Third person, omniscient
- Setting
- Atlantic triangular trade routes
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Colonialism and empire
- Freedom
- Morality
- Oppression
- Power
- Wealth
Content notes
- Violence
- Strong
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- None
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- Booker Prize, 1992
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
W. W. Norton & Company · 1993 · Paperback. ISBN 9780393311143.
How long does it take to read Sacred Hunger?
About 13 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 656-page W. W. Norton & Company edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth was an English novelist who treated historical fiction as fiction first, aiming less at documentary display than at the lived perspective of people on history’s margins. He built moral inquiry from sharply opposed viewpoints and acts of storytelling. Sacred Hunger sets an expansive, period-inflected account of the slave trade around a merchant’s heir and a physician, placing comic passages beside scenes of cruelty as it examines profit and human suffering. In Morality Play, a troupe’s decision to dramatize a recent murder turns rehearsal into investigation, exposing how authority and social rank shape an accepted story of guilt.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Publication year
- 1993
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 656
- ISBN
- 9780393311143
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1992
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Historical fiction · Social novel · Tragicomedy
- Editions
- 5
- Languages
- 1 (English)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.