Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Random House Audio (2006), Edition: Unabridged
Description
Fiction. Horror. Suspense. Thriller. HTML: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.… (more)
Media reviews
When last seen in the novels of Thomas Harris, Dr. Hannibal Lecter -- clinical psychiatrist, criminal mastermind and grisly gourmand -- was dancing with former FBI agent Clarice Starling on a terrace in Buenos Aires. The discomforting finale of "Hannibal" (1999), which suggested that Clarice had
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succumbed to Lecter's chemicals, if not his charm, was rejected in the movie version in favor of a more (dare we say?) palatable confection. Now Harris eludes the dissonance of those alternative endings by writing a suspense-driven prequel, "Hannibal Rising": a portrait of the cannibal as a young man. Show Less
Thomas Harris owes Anthony Hopkins a debt that he may never adequately repay. Before Hopkins starred as serial killer Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in the film adaptation of Harris' thriller The Silence Of The Lambs, Harris was already a popular author, with two books under his belt, both adapted
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to film. But it took Hopkins' sublimely creepy portrayal to catch audiences' imaginations and assure that they'd lay out cash for any book about Lecter, no matter how hacky, tacky, and ill-conceived. The latest, the Silence prequel Hannibal Rising, is at least a step up from the wallowing, pointless grotesqueries of 1999's Hannibal; this installment has its irritating quirks and its notable lacks, but at least it points its Grand Guignol tropes to some purpose. Show Less
It really is a shame about Thomas Harris. Red Dragon, published in 1981, and The Silence of the Lambs, which came out seven years later, are among the greatest thrillers of our time.
At a certain point, great pop-culture creations tend, like Frankenstein's monster, to slip their bonds and escape from the control of their progenitors. And Thomas Harris, who dreamed up the pre-eminent fictional boogeyman of our time, seems to recognize that Hannibal Lecter, the homicidal
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epicurean psychiatrist he brought into being as a plot device and a good sick joke in his 1981 thriller, ''Red Dragon,'' isn't quite his anymore. Show Less
The new Thomas Harris novel goes by the title of “Hannibal Rising” (Delacorte; $27.95). This has the effect of making Dr. Hannibal Lecter sound like a soufflé, a fever chart, or a storm—all comparisons that the good doctor, who prides himself as an epicure and a force of nature, would be
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bound to welcome. Show Less
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,
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goes back to a clean slate, to beginnings. Hannibal Rising promises to explain how a human being became Dr Lecter. Show Less
Hannibal Lecter is, surely, a fictional character who needs no introduction. It’s one of the grosser stupidities of this almost limitlessly stupid novel to think that those readers who have enjoyed the grand guignol of Thomas Harris’s other Lecter novels, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs,
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and Hannibal would welcome an account, even an explanation of his hero’s habits. In theory, one ought to be curious how it is that someone ends up thinking it quite entertaining to cut slices off a human brain (for instance) and sauté them at table before sharing the dish with his girlfriend and the still living victim. Show Less
In a turreted castle in the forests of Lithuania, the notorious 14th-century "Hannibal the Grim" flung his enemies into an oubliette to rot. Around 1940, Count Lecter's precocious son Hannibal, "of his line and not of his line", was lowered into the old stone well as a treat (or what passed for a
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treat up at Castle Lecter). Scratched by a dying man, a desperate question survived on the wall: "Pourquoi?" Show Less
Thomas Harris's bestselling 1988 novel "The Silence of the Lambs," and its Oscar-winning film adaptation, made Hannibal Lecter a household name. As a highly intelligent, cold-blooded serial killer with a penchant for cannibalism, Lecter was so frightening because he seemed utterly lacking in
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conscience, without a history. Lecter was a walking contradiction, a "civilized" monster. Show Less
The brothers Grimm have a lot to answer for. The most powerful part of Hannibal Rising, the long-awaited fourth novel about the cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter, is the first section, which is, in essence, a Second World War version of the story of Hansel and Gretel.
Hannibal Rising must be among the most eagerly anticipated crime/thriller novels of the year. The publishers obviously think so anyway, as I had to sign a three-page legal document, promising not to write about the book, discuss it, or possibly even speak its title above a whisper until the date of
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publication. And then it was biked round and hand-delivered in a plain brown wrapper. A bit like a porno mag, as I remember. Show Less
In 1981's Red Dragon, Thomas Harris' first Lecter novel, the cunning, diabolical killer manipulates a psychotic murderer and a detective, even though he is ensconced in his cell, perusing Alexandre Dumas' Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. I lay in bed reading Red Dragon one night, immersed in the
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story — but also suddenly, dreadfully alert to all the night sounds pouring in my window: wind-rustled leaves, distant train whistles, footsteps on the street (dog walkers, I hoped, and not serial killers). When I closed the book, I was gripped with heart-thumping fear. Show Less
This is what Thomas Harris’s readers would least like to hear from Mr. Harris’s flesh-eating celebrity, Dr. Hannibal Lecter: “I deeply regret any pain I may have caused for the victims and their families. For years I have helplessly battled the problem that caused me to misbehave. I intend to
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seek treatment for it immediately.” Show Less
In "The Philosophy of Horror," Noel Carroll argues that monsters violate our core conceptual frameworks. By merging otherwise exclusive states of being — zombies, for example, are both alive and dead — they undermine our faith in a safe and orderly universe. Their threat is as much existential
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as physical. Show Less
Awards
Delete Key Award (Finalist — 2007)
Original publication date
2006