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Biographical note
Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in Durham. He was the author of many novels, including Pascali’s Island, which was shortlisted for the 1980 Booker Prize; Stone Virgin (1985); Sacred Hunger, which was joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize; Morality Play, which was shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize; Losing Nelson (1999); The Songs of the King (2002); The Ruby in Her Navel (2006); Land of Marvels (2009); and The Quality of Mercy (2011), which was shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Barry Unsworth died in 2012.Richly peopled, fast-moving, cleverly plotted, written with economy and elegance, this novel has the satisfying density and sweep of a book twice its length
Sunday Times
Unsworth wraps his dark themes around a plot full of adventure and romance. Rifles are fired, locks are broken and necks are kissed in the midnight desert.
Daily Telegraph
Reading this novel is like watching an Olympic athlete about to win the gold: the seamless flow of action, the mastery of technique, seemingly effortless yet demanding attention and eliciting admiration as an end in itself
Guardian
The historical novel should do three things: make tangible the period in question; reflect it in to the modern world; and, like all novels, entertain. Barry Unsworth is a master of all three concerns ...
TLS
... <i>Land</i><i> of Marvels</i> could easily have become a morality tale about greed and imperial ambitions. But Unsworth is too canny a storyteller for that. It is greed that triumphs in the end. And, though empires change, imperial ambitions prevail. Such grim reflections on the past are sobering, too, when considering the current predicament of Iraq
Financial Times
Tensions mount in the desert as spies and assassins join the cast of soldiers and archaeologists, and the story hurtles on towards its fiery denouement.
Evening Standard
His prose is elegant and sure as ever.
Spectator
Unsworth is the most accomplished of novelists. All the characters are thoroughly imagined and ring true - even Jehar, convinced of the truth of his own lying rhetoric. As in all the best novels, characters reveal themselves in speech - and we see them as they present themselves to others. The plot moves faster as the novel gets into its stride. Unsworth, like Walter Scott, knows what is to be gained by an apparently languid introduction, scene-setting before the action takes over. He knows that credibility must first be established before action is significant. This is a cunningly put-together novel, in which the development of the plot advancing to an inexorable climax gains enormously from the deliberately leisurely opening.
Scotsman
A terrifically entertaining novel.
- Kerry Shale, Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4
A richly imagined novel squarely in the tradition of his Booker Prize triumph <i>Sacred Hunger</i>.
- Geraldine Brooks,
1914, and an English archaeologist called Somerville is fulfilling a lifelong dream: to direct an excavation in the desert of Mesopotamia. Yet forces beyond his control threaten his work.
The Great War is looming, and various interest groups are vying for control over the land and its manyprizes. And Somerville, whose intention is purely to discover and preserve the land's ancient treasures finds his idealism sorely tested. Naked ambition, treachery and greed are at play, in a thrilling adventure from the master of the historical novel.
1914, and an English archaeologist called Somerville is fulfilling a lifelong dream: to direct an excavation in the desert of Mesopotamia. And Somerville, whose intention is purely to discover and preserve the land's ancient treasures finds his idealism sorely tested.