Hannibal Rising (Hannibal Lecter Series #4)

by Thomas Harris, Thomas Harris (Narrated by)

Overview

HE IS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTING CHARACTERS OF 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739321065
Publisher:	Books on Tape, Inc.
Publication date:	12/12/2006
Series:	Hannibal Lecter Series , #4
Edition description:	Unabridged

About the Author

Thomas Harris began his writing career covering crime in the United States and Mexico, and was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press in New York City. His first novel, Black Sunday, was published in 1975, followed by Red Dragon in 1981, The Silence of the Lambs in 1988, and Hannibal in 1999.

Hometown:

Sag Harbor, New York, and Miami Beach, Florida

Date of Birth:

April 11, 1940

Place of Birth:

Jackson, Tennessee

Education:

B.A., Baylor University, 1964

Website:

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/thomasharris

Read an Excerpt

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...

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Twenty-five years after Thomas Harris introduced the world to one of the most memorable literary villains of all time (in 1981's Red Dragon), he revisits his signature character with a chilling prequel that chronicles the horrific childhood of Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter.

As a child growing up in Lithuania, life is blissful for young Hannibal and his little sister, Mischa, living in the majestic Castle Lecter with their loving parents. Hannibal's carefree existence, however, is turned into a living nightmare when Hitler's armies invade the Soviet Union and his family is forced to flee. After more than three years surviving in the wilderness during Hitler's bloody eastern campaign, the horror of war finally finds Hannibal, and he is forced to endure a never-ending barrage of brutality: the destruction of his home, the death of his parents, the gruesome murder of his sister at the hands of starving thugs, etc. But Hannibal's life is spared when his uncle finds him and relocates him to France. Even as he matures into an educated young man, though, the haunting images of his youth compel him to seek some kind of vengeance…

With all the hype surrounding the publication of this book, there's a significant chance that the result will fall short of readers' expectations; but Harris pulls it off with a brilliantly restrained -- and powerfully moving -- story about the transformation of a sensitive, loving, intelligent boy into a cold-blooded monster. Hard-core fans of Harris's Hannibal quartet (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal) will undoubtedly enjoy this read with some fava beans and a nice Chianti… Paul Goat Allen

Harris's writing is assured, with elegant shifts of tense and point of view; perhaps it is the focused plot or the insistently visual style that acknowledges the inevitable movie adaptation, but simply in terms of craft, Hannibal Rising is arguably the best of his novels.
— The Washington Post

Douglas E. Winter

Harris returns to fiction's most famous cannibal in this prequel about the origins of the dark yet endearing villain, Hannibal Lecter. Torn from his family and ancestral home in Lithuania during World War II, Lecter witnesses the violent death of his sister, Mischa, which becomes the catalyst for his future devious behavior. Through glimpses of Lecter's early life, listeners discover how Lecter came to be such a highly educated and cultured man as well as a cold-blooded killer. While a condensed version might have worked as backstory to a larger novel, when stretched to novel length, it feels coerced and lacking in comparison to Harris's previous novels. Unfortunately, Harris's reading of the novel further hurts the story. Every "Hannibal" comes out as "Annibal" and Harris's accents for his different characters feel trite. When characters lack accents, they all sound generic including Hannibal himself. Harris keeps a moderate rhythm and pace, but his voice doesn't capture the mood and tone that reverberates from a menacing person such as Lecter. Harris's demeanor is light and friendly where it should be dark and brooding. Simultaneous release with the Delacorte hardcover (reviewed online). (Dec.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

There are images of morbid beauty here.... Harris' handling of the wartime violence is also impressive, as swift and vicious as the blitzkrieg itself.”—Los Angeles Times
“Gripping detail.... [Harris] moves the story along at an impressively fast clip.”—Boston Globe

From the Publisher