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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Author Thomas Harris was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1940 to Thomas, an electrical engineer, and Polly, a high school chemistry and biology teacher. He graduated with a B.A. from Baylor University in 1964. He has one child, a daughter, from his first marriage.
Harris worked as a general assignment reporter for the Associated Press in New York and covered the crime beat daily. He spent time at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico and has interviewed serial killer Ted Bundy in researching for his novels.
Harris's first novel, "Black Sunday" (1975), was a collaborative effort with fellow reporters Sam Maul and Dick Riley. While working the evening shift for the AP, they came up with the idea of using the Goodyear Blimp as the vehicle for a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl. The next novel, "Red Dragon" (1981), tells the story of the FBI's search for a murderer and introduces the infamous character Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. The 1986 movie version of this novel was titled Manhunter. Next came, what many considered to be a masterpiece of suspense, "The Silence of the Lambs" (1988) and brings back the psychopathic killer Hannibal Lecter in an intense exploration of evil. The film version became the third movie in history to claim the top five Academy Awards, which were Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Screenplay (Ted Tally), Best Director (Jonathan Demme) and Best Picture. The sequel, "Hannibal," was published in 1999 and it was also made into a movie.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Twenty-five years after Hannibal Lecter, a cross between Professor Moriarty and Jack the Ripper, first invaded the imaginations of countless readers worldwide in Red Dragon, bestseller Harris has crafted an unmemorable prequel that's intended to explain the origins of Lecter's evil. Fans of Harris's previous Lecter novel, Hannibal (1999), already know the major trauma that transformed the young Lecter-the murder of his beloved younger sister, Mischa, during WWII-which the author describes in more grisly detail. Lecter also has an unusual love interest, his uncle's Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki, but the bulk of the narrative focuses on Lecter's quest for revenge on those he holds responsible for Mischa's death. Unfortunately, the prose and plotting lack the suspenseful power of Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs, and will leave many feeling that with such a masterful monster as Lecter, less is more. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In the parlance of superhero comics, the latest product of Harris best-seller-and-hit-flick factory would be called an origins story, a narrative accounting for the heros superness. Bruce Wayne becomes Batman because of the childhood trauma of seeing a gunsel mow down his parents. Hannibal Lecter becomes the ultimate übermensch because of the childhood trauma of seeing his little sister eaten by criminal scavengers-guys so loathsome even the SS wont take them--near the end of World War II. Whether and to what extent he actually saw wee Mischas demise remain in question throughout most of the book, for until he is an 18-year-old med-school whiz kid, he cant consciously recall the incident. Which doesnt, however, mean that he isnt bent on revenge from the minute after he last sees Mischa alive. Revenge he exacts, making the closing third of the book riveting, not least because at 18 he lacks the omniscience that he honed to perfection in The Silence of the Lambs (1988). Harris creation continues to fascinate, here as a youngster far more than as a should-be-doddering senior in Hannibal (1999), and despite (or because of) Harris styleless prose. The movie opens all over, like one of the gross anatomy specimens Hannibal prepares in these pages, in February. Start soaking the fava beans.--"Olson, Ray" Copyright 2007 Booklist
Guardian Review
Reimagining the origin myth is a fine way to revive an ailing franchise, as Batman Begins and Casino Royale have shown. Perhaps oppressed by imagery of a teeth-sucking Anthony Hopkins in Ridley Scott's squelchily horrible film of Hannibal - how do you top that climactic meal? - Thomas Harris, too, goes back to a clean slate, to beginnings. Hannibal Rising promises to explain how a human being became Dr Lecter. There is danger here, as there is not in the case of superheroes and iconic spies, for if a character such as Lecter is explained as himself a victim of some original trauma, he is no longer fascinating as an avatar of absolute evil. It was that fascination, felt by FBI agent Clarice Starling (along with the reader) in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal , that fuelled those novels. If you have to explain a villain, it is perhaps best to do it on the hoof, in evocative flashback, as with Keyser Soze's origin story in The Usual Suspects . Or don't do it at all, as Bram Stoker did not with Dracula (but Francis Ford Coppola felt obliged to do in his otherwise rather faithful adaptation). Spelling it all out in a prequel, however, does risk bathos. Reader, it's all Hitler's fault. The gothic Lithuanian castle that is home to Count Lecter and his family, including little Hannibal, is caught up in the fighting between Germany and the USSR in the 1940s. Hannibal's parents and the staff are killed, and something monstrous happens to his little sister. After the war, he is found by his uncle, and taken to live in Paris. A mathematical and scientific prodigy in his teens, he goes to medical school, and sets about tracking down the men who wronged him. They will not, we guess, long survive. Meanwhile we have discovered how Hannibal acquired his celebrated "memory palace" (a kindly Jewish tutor called Jakov, back at the ancestral seat), and there is an odd subplot of art-historical detection. Combined with the somewhat touristy grooves of Hannibal's movements in Paris (whose placenames there has apparently been no time to edit), this prompts the dismaying thought that, after the brilliantly taut and claustrophobic procedurals earlier in the series, Harris has finally morphed into an upmarket version of Dan Brown. There is still vastly more class and body in Harris's prose than in Brown's, of course (there could hardly be less). A skein of through-composed imagery involving birds is subtly nagging, and there are interesting tangential formulations, as when it is said of Jakov that he "made no effort to hide his mind, or to show it off, but he never pointed it directly at anyone"; or when, before his first kill, Hannibal experiences "a sharpness of vision, with edges of refracted red like ice on a window or the edge of a lens". There is, too, a superbly uncanny image of Notre Dame cathedral as a huge spider, scuttling through the city at night. But though there are still individual sentences and paragraphs to recall Harris's past mastery, the extremely short chapters are telling. Mere sequence, as of a film composed entirely of brief scenes, has replaced rhythm and suspense. Since the redoubtable Clarice has not been born, young Hannibal needs another female foil. One is furnished in the shape of his uncle's wife. Luckily, she is Japanese, and so references to calligraphy, flower-arranging and haiku can do service for Lady Murasaki's character. The two conduct a peculiarly unpersuasive courtly love affair, at the unsatisfying conclusion of which Hannibal becomes, we are perhaps meant to suspect, ronin , or a samurai without a master. In the interim, it appears to have taken some time for the anti- hero to refine his wit. One of his early attempts at a jokey payoff has him saying, of a man he has drowned in a vat of embalming fluid: "He arrived at a solution." The line begs for the help of Roger Moore's raised eyebrow. By the novel's final tidying, happily, Hannibal has become the morbidly wisecracking murderer we all know and love, informing his last victim, a taxidermist: "I've come to collect a head." What is missing, unfortunately, is what the dustjacket promised: an explanation of "the evolution of his evil". At the end Hannibal is still a righteous avenging fury - pursuing justice, if sadistically. How does he turn into the demonic cannibal serial killer we first met in Red Dragon ? There are rather chaste references to his acquisition of a taste for human flesh, but readers will thrill to no equivalent of the scene in George Lucas's Revenge of the Sith , where the Darth Vader suit is bolted around Anakin's scorched body. Hannibal is still not really Hannibal. This raises the most terrifying possibility of all: that another prequel lies in wait. Steven Poole's most recent book is Unspeak (Little, Brown). To order Hannibal Rising for pounds 16.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop Caption: article-hannibal.1 Meanwhile we have discovered how Hannibal acquired his celebrated "memory palace" (a kindly Jewish tutor called Jakov, back at the ancestral seat), and there is an odd subplot of art-historical detection. Combined with the somewhat touristy grooves of Hannibal's movements in Paris (whose placenames there has apparently been no time to edit), this prompts the dismaying thought that, after the brilliantly taut and claustrophobic procedurals earlier in the series, [Harris] has finally morphed into an upmarket version of Dan Brown. What is missing, unfortunately, is what the dustjacket promised: an explanation of "the evolution of his evil". At the end Hannibal is still a righteous avenging fury - pursuing justice, if sadistically. How does he turn into the demonic cannibal serial killer we first met in Red Dragon ? There are rather chaste references to his acquisition of a taste for human flesh, but readers will thrill to no equivalent of the scene in George Lucas's Revenge of the Sith , where the Darth Vader suit is bolted around Anakin's scorched body. Hannibal is still not really Hannibal. This raises the most terrifying possibility of all: that another prequel lies in wait. - Steven Poole.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Prologue The door to Dr. Hannibal Lecter's memory palace is in the darkness at the center of his mind and it has a latch that can be found by touch alone. This curious portal opens on immense and well-lit spaces, early baroque, and corridors and chambers rivaling in number those of the Topkapi Museum. Everywhere there are exhibits, well-spaced and lighted, each keyed to memories that lead to other memories in geometric progression. Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter's earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted Attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like. The palace is a construction begun early in Hannibal's student life. In his years of confinement he improved and enlarged his palace, and its riches sustained him for long periods while warders denied him his books. Here in the hot darkness of his mind, let us feel together for the latch. Finding it, let us elect for music in the corridors and, looking neither left nor right, go to the Hall of the Beginning where the displays are most fragmentary. We will add to them what we have learned elsewhere, in war records and police records, from interviews and forensics and the mute postures of the dead. Robert Lecter's letters, recently unearthed, may help us establish the vital statistics of Hannibal, who altered dates freely to confound the authorities and his chroniclers. By our efforts we may watch as the beast within turns from the teat and, working upwind, enters the world. Chapter 6 "Do you know what today is?" Hannibal asked over his breakfast gruel at the lodge. "It's the day the sun reaches Uncle Elgar's window." "What time will it appear?" Mr. Jakov asked, as though he didn't know. "It will peep around the tower at ten-thirty," Hannibal said. "That was in 1941," Mr. Jakov said. "Do you mean to say the moment of arrival will be the same?" "Yes." "But the year is more than 365 days long." "But, Mr. Jakov, this is the year after leap year. So wasl941, the last time we watched." "Then does the calendar adjust perfectly, or do we live by gross corrections?" A thorn popped in the fire. "I think those are separate questions," Hannibal said. Mr. Jakov was pleased, but his response was just another question: "Will the year 2000 be a leap year?" "No--yes, yes, it will be a leap year." "But it is divisible by one hundred," Mr. Jakov said. "It's also divisible by four hundred," Hannibal said. "Exactly so," Mr. Jakov said. "It will be the first time the Gregorian rule is applied. Perhaps, on that day, surviving all gross corrections, you will remember our talk. In this strange place." He raised his cup. "Next year in Lecter Castle." Lothar heard it first as he drew water, the roar of an engine in low gear and cracking of branches. He left the bucket on the well and in his haste he came into the lodge without wiping his feet. A Soviet tank, a T-34 in winter camouflage of snow and straw, crashed up the horse trail and into the clearing. Painted on the turret in Russian were AVENGE OUR SOVIET GIRLS and WIPE OUT THE FASCIST VERMIN. Two soldiers in white rode on the back over the radiators. The turret swiveled to point the tank's cannon at the house. A hatch opened and a gunner in hooded winter white stood behind a machine gun. The tank commander stood in the other hatch with a megaphone. He repeated his message in Russian and in German, barking over the diesel clatter of the tank engine. "We want water, we will not harm you or take your food unless a shot comes from the house. If we are fired on, every one of you will die. Now come outside. Gunner, lock and load. If you do not see faces by the count of ten, fire." A loud clack as the machine gun's bolt went back. Count Lecter stepped outside, standing straight in the sunshine, his hands visible. "Take the water. We are no harm to you." The tank commander put his megaphone aside. "Everyone outside where I can see you." The count and the tank commander looked at each other for a long moment. The tank commander showed his palms. The count showed his palms. The count turned to the house. "Come." When the commander saw the family he said, "The children can stay inside where it's warm." And to his gunner and crew, "Cover them. Watch the upstairs windows. Start the pump. You can smoke." The machine gunner pushed up his goggles and lit a cigarette. He was no more than a boy, the skin of his face paler around his eyes. He saw Mischa peeping around the door facing and smiled at her. Among the fuel and water drums lashed to the tank was a small petrol-powered pump with a rope starter. The tank driver snaked a hose with a screen filter down the well and after many pulls on the rope the pump clattered, squealed, and primed itself. The noise covered the scream of the Stuka dive bomber until it was almost on them, the tank's gunner swiveling his muzzle around, cranking hard to elevate his gun, firing as the airplane's winking cannon stitched the ground. Rounds screamed off the tank, the gunner hit, still firing with his remaining arm. The Stuka's windscreen starred with fractures, the pilot's goggles filled with blood and the dive bomber, still carrying one of its eggs, hit treetops, plowed into the garden and its fuel exploded, cannon under the wings still firing after the impact. Hannibal, on the floor of the lodge, Mischa partly under him, saw his mother lying in the yard, bloody and her dress on fire. "Stay here!" to Mischa and he ran to his mother, ammunition in the airplane cooking off now, slow and then faster, casings flying backward striking the snow, flames licking around the remaining bomb beneath the wing. The pilot sat in the cockpit, dead, his face burned to a death's head in flaming scarf and helmet, his gunner dead behind him. Lothar alone survived in the yard and he raised a bloody arm to the boy. Then Mischa ran to her mother, out into the yard and Lothar tried to reach her and pull her down as she passed, but a cannon round from the flaming plane slammed through him, blood spattering the baby and Mischa raised her arms and screamed into the sky. Hannibal heaped snow onto the fire in his mother's clothes, stood up and ran to Mischa amid the random shots and carried her into the lodge, into the cellar. The shots outside slowed and stopped as bullets melted in the breeches of the cannon. The sky darkened and snow came again, hissing on the hot metal. Darkness, and snow again. Hannibal among the corpses, how much later he did not know, snow drifting down to dust his mother's eyelashes and her hair. She was the only corpse not blackened and crisped. Hannibal tugged at her, but her body was frozen to the ground. He pressed his face against her. Her bosom was frozen hard, her heart silent. He put a napkin over her face and piled snow on her. Dark shapes moved at the edge of the woods. His torch reflected on wolves' eyes. He shouted at them and waved a shovel. Mischa was determined to come out to her mother--he had to choose. He took Mischa back inside and left the dead to the dark. Mr. Jakov's book was undamaged beside his blackened hand until a wolf ate the leather cover and amid the scattered pages of Huyghens' Treatise on Light licked Mr. Jakov's brains off the snow. Hannibal and Mischa heard snuffling and growling outside. Hannibal built up the fire. To cover the noise he tried to get Mischa to sing; he sang to her. She clutched his coat in her fists. "Ein Mannlein . . ." Snowflakes on the windows. In the corner of a pane, a dark circle appeared, made by the tip of a glove. In the dark circle a pale blue eye. Excerpted from Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
