Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780099416838
Format: Import
ISBN number: 0099416832
Label: Arrow Books
Manufacturer: Arrow Books
Page Count: 576
Printing Date: January 01, 2001
Publishing house: Arrow Books
Sale Popularity Level: 1694996
Studio: Arrow Books
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Rated by buyers -
I enjoyed this book, a much more perverse tale than the excellent, though romanticized, film. The Hannibal of the book is not Anthony Hopkins at all, more like a Bela Lugosi type of Dracula origins. Count Lechter is not a modern man.
In the film, I loved the tracking scene when the pickpocket Gnocchi trailed Lechter to obtain fingerprints on a silver bracelet. In the book, that sequence is more complicated with more characters involved, particularly the gypsy women who fail to get fingerprints once they realize they are dealing with the devil.
I also loved Lechter at the gun and knife show, observing Donny Barber replaying endlessly a video of a deer hunt. Where Harris came up with Lechter's commands, asking Buck to "make him a parcel" of his purchases, I don't know but very funny.
And of course the ending. I was stunned although I also saw it as a liberation for Clarice whose life otherwise would have been predictably dreary.
Rated by buyers -
Thomas Harris is a wonder, truly. I wanted to devour Hannibal, but resisted the impulse and slowed way down. Read this book as if it were a delectible multi-course meal. As if it were planned, prepared and conducted by Dr. Lecter, himself. Every bit of plot, every paragraph and passage; every sentance was delicious and should be slowly savoured. The story answered all my questions, the violence devious and decadent, but the language, the words? Utter ambrosia. Thomas Harris' mastery of the written word is what we writers all hope to achieve. He is the Master.PILATE: A Brutal Bible Tale
Rated by buyers -
hannibal is a fantastic film but some people don't know that silence of the lambs, man hunter , and hannibal are books. i think that the book versions are much better than the films..though it is fun to hear anthony hopkins voice when you read the hannibal lines. it's a great book that will keep you turning the pages till you are done.
Rated by buyers -
With Hannibal, Thomas Harris has given us a great comic novel that is "beyond good and evil." In this highly entertaining novel, Mr. Harris demonstrates the ability to say terrible things and present horrific images with a verbal delivery so "deadpan" and swift (in its economy) that for the reader it is like being raped before we realize any of our buttons have been undone. The author's "neutral" stance on inter-species and human cannibalism, for example, can only be seen as a great comic vision that "this too does not really matter."
****** SPOILER Alert
Harris, the ironist, identifies God as the master sadistic ironist whose games of human cruelty pale into insignificance Hannibal's "own modest predations." This realization comes to Dr. Lecter as a six year old, after seeing the baby teeth of his cannibalized sister, Mischa, in the "reeking stool pit" of her anonymous predators (end of Chapter 48).
The final "dining scene," so finely wrought with its elegance and sophistication, once again is best understood as comic ---- given the incongruity of the highest "cuisine aesthetic" juxtaposed with the gentle feeding on a living human brain.
Dr. Lecter's ruthless and powerful seduction of "goodness" (Starling) is greatly aided by the ever-presented documentation that the universe is unbelievably cruel, arbitrary, or at least profoundly indifferent and uncaring. That the highly educated and brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, knows this (as does the author) is his only redemption. This terrible knowledge, it must be said, would not be redemptive if it were not so very true. The refined feast of evil presented to us in such an orderly and dispassionate fashion in this great novel is the comic cover for the dark, limitless, and terrifying process of entropy that we as readers are allowed to apprehend only from a distance. Our comprehension from the comic/aesthetic distance of Thomas Harris's vision is necessary (the distance I mean) for us to maintain our sanity and yet grasp some of the true horror of human existence, and still be entertained. I give this book 5 stars.
Rated by buyers -
There was a lot of discusion and general hub-bub about this book when it came out. Did you like the ending, how could he write that, Clarise would never do that blah blah blah. I think this book ended honestly!
Clarise finds herself in an awful, career ending mess. there are forces that surround her, pushing her in many directions, but SHE choses which one to follow. Hannibal is where her obsession lies, and she follows that path to the very end.
Yes this is a twisted book with a bizarre ending but to me, it was what made this book interesting and special. Really I couldn't put it down. I think I read the last 200 pages all in one sitting. I recomend this book to anyone who loves Silence of the Lambs (book or movie) and even if you've seen the movie and it's changed ending, read the book so you can decide for yourself.
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