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Barry Unsworth

Morality Play

  • Morality Play

  • It is the late fourteenth century, a dangerous time beset by war and plague. Nicholas Barber, a young and wayward cleric, stumbles across a group of travelling players and compounds his sins by joining them.

    Yet the town where they perform reveals another drama: a young woman is to be hanged for the murder of a twelve-year-old boy. What better way to increase their takings than to make a new play, to enact the murder of Thomas Wells? But as the actors rehearse, they discover that the truth about the boy's death has yet to be revealed...

Losing Nelson
Losing Nelson
Barry Unsworth
Stone Virgin
Stone Virgin
Barry Unsworth
The Quality of Mercy
The Quality of Mercy
Barry Unsworth
Land of Marvels
Land of Marvels
Barry Unsworth
Claudius the God
Claudius the God
Robert Graves
I, Claudius
I, Claudius
Robert Graves
Sacred Hunger
Sacred Hunger
Barry Unsworth

Penguin Modern Classics

1274 Books

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.

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