Barry Unsworth

Author profile

born

August 08, 1930 in Wingate, The United Kingdom

gender

male

website

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=a...

genre

Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction

About this author

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Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in a mining village in Durham, and he attended Stockton-on-Tees Grammar School and Manchester University, B.A., 1951.

From 1951-53, in the British Army, Royal Corps of Signals, he served and became second lieutenant.

A teacher and a novelist, Unsworth has worked as a lecturer in English at Norwood Technical College, London, at University of Athens for the British Council, at University of Istanbul,Turkey for British Council, lived as a Writer in residence, Liverpool University, England, and also at Lund University, Sweden. He was a teacher at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, 1999.

Unsworth has been twice married, to Valerie Moor, 1959 with whom he had three daughters(marriage dissolved, 1991), and to...more Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in a mining village in Durham, and he attended Stockton-on-Tees Grammar School and Manchester University, B.A., 1951.

From 1951-53, in the British Army, Royal Corps of Signals, he served and became second lieutenant.

A teacher and a novelist, Unsworth has worked as a lecturer in English at Norwood Technical College, London, at University of Athens for the British Council, at University of Istanbul,Turkey for British Council, lived as a Writer in residence, Liverpool University, England, and also at Lund University, Sweden. He was a teacher at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, 1999.

Unsworth has been twice married, to Valerie Moor, 1959 with whom he had three daughters(marriage dissolved, 1991), and to Aira Pohjanvaara-Buffa, 1992. In later years he has made his home in Umbria, Italy.

Unsworth's first novel, The Partnership, was published in 1966 when he was 36. "...in my earlier novels, especially the two written in the early ’70s, The Hide and Mooncranker’s Gift, there was a baroque quality in the style, a density. The mood was grim, but the language was more figurative and more high-spirited. There was more delight in it, more self-indulgence, too. Among my earliest influences as a writer were the American novelists of the deep south, especially Eudora Welty, and some of that elated, grotesque comedy stayed with me."

Other novels include Mooncranker's Gift (1973) (winner of the Heinemann Award), Stone Virgin (1985), and Losing Nelson (1999). He counts William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers as his major influences.

Unsworth did not start to write historical fiction until his sixth novel, Pascali's Island. Pascali's Island (1980), the first of his novels to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is set on an unnamed Aegean island during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Reflecting on this shift, Unsworth explained: "Nowadays I go to Britain relatively rarely and for short periods; in effect, I have become an expatriate. The result has been a certain loss of interest in British life and society and a very definite loss of confidence in my ability to register the contemporary scene there – the kind of things people say, the styles of dress, the politics etc.– with sufficient subtlety and accuracy. So I have turned to the past. The great advantage of this, for a writer of my temperament at least, is that one is freed from a great deal of surface clutter. One is enabled to take a remote period and use it as a distant mirror (to borrow Barbara Tuchman’s phrase), and so try to say things about our human condition – then and now – which transcend the particular period and become timeless." Pascali's Island was adapted as a film by James Dearden, starring Charles Dance, Helen Mirren, and Ben Kingsley as the title character.

Morality Play, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1995, is a murder mystery set in 14th-century England. It was adapted as a film, The Reckoning, starring Paul Bettany and Willem Dafoe.

"With time I have grown more sparing with the words. I think less of fire-works and flourishes. I try to get warmth and color through precision of language. This is more difficult, I think, which may be why I find writing novels so challenging and exacting."

Awards:
Heinemann Award for Literature, Royal Society of Literature, 1974, for Mooncranker's Gift; Arts Council Creative Writing fellowship, Charlotte Mason College, 1978-79; literary fellow, Universities of Durham and Newcastle, 1983-84; Booker Prize (joint winner), 1992, for Sacred Hunger; honorary Litt.D., Manchester University, 1998.(less)

combine editions
Books by Barry Unsworth

Average rating: 3.72 · 3,633 ratings · 563 reviews · 27 distinct works

	Sacred Hunger 4.15 avg rating — 1,297 ratings — published 1992 — 12 editions	My rating:
	Morality Play 3.68 avg rating — 927 ratings — published 1995 — 19 editions	My rating:
	Land of Marvels 3.07 avg rating — 253 ratings — published 2008 — 9 editions	My rating:
	The Ruby in Her Navel 3.15 avg rating — 238 ratings — published 2006 — 14 editions	My rating:
	The Songs of the Kings 3.62 avg rating — 185 ratings — published 2002 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Stone Virgin 3.73 avg rating — 143 ratings — published 1985 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Losing Nelson 3.56 avg rating — 128 ratings — published 1999 — 10 editions	My rating:
	After Hannibal 3.24 avg rating — 101 ratings — published 1996 — 8 editions	My rating:
	The Rage of the Vulture 3.37 avg rating — 84 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Pascali's Island 3.18 avg rating — 72 ratings — published 1980 — 6 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Barry Unsworth

“Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way”
― Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

tags: suffering

6 people liked it

“There are no stronger fetters than those we forge for ourselves.”
― Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

3 people liked it

“Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer. Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days. In Short, sir, there has been a leap in bribes.”
― Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

3 people liked it

See all Barry Unsworth's quotes »

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