BookBrowse has a new look! Learn more about the update here.

Reviews of Hannibal by Thomas Harris

Hannibal by Thomas Harris

Hannibal

by Thomas Harris
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Jun 1, 1999
  • Paperback:
  • May 2000
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

Prepare to travel to hell and beyond as a master storyteller permanently alters the world you thought you knew.

Invite Hannibal Lecter into the palace of your mind and be invited into his mind palace in turn. Note the similarities in yours and his, the high vaulted chambers of your dreams, the shadowed halls, the locked storerooms where you dare not go, the scrap of half-forgotten music, the muffled cries from behind a wall.

In one of the most eagerly anticipated literary events of the decade, Thomas Harris takes us once again into the mind of a killer, crafting a chilling portrait of insidiously evolving evil--a tour de force of psychological suspense.

Seven years have passed since Dr. Hannibal Lecter escaped from custody, seven years since FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling interviewed him in a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane. The doctor is still at large, pursuing his own ineffable interests, savoring the scents, the essences of an unguarded world. But Starling has never forgotten her encounters with Dr. Lecter, and the metallic rasp of his seldom-used voice still sounds in her dreams.

Mason Verger remembers Dr. Lecter, too, and is obsessed with revenge. He was Dr. Lecter's sixth victim, and he has survived to rule his own butcher's empire. From his respirator, Verger monitors every twitch in his worldwide web. Soon he sees that to draw the doctor, he must have the most exquisite and innocent-appearing bait; he must have what Dr. Lecter likes best.

Powerful, hypnotic, utterly original, Hannibal is a dazzling feast for the imagination. Prepare to travel to hell and beyond as a master storyteller permanently alters the world you thought you knew.

Chapter 21

The Christian martyr San Miniato picked up his severed head from the sand of the Roman amphitheater in Florence and carried it beneath his arm to the mountainside across the river where he lies in his splendid church, tradition says.

Certainly San Miniato's body, erect or not, passed en route along the ancient street where we now stand, the Via de' Bardi. The evening gathers now and the street is empty, the fan pattern of the cobbles shining in a winter drizzle not cold enough to kill the smell of cats. We are among the palaces built six hundred years ago by the merchant princes, the kingmakers and connivers of Renaissance Florence. Within bow-shot across the Arno River are the cruel spikes of the Signoria, where the monk Savonarola was hanged and burned, and that great meat house of hanging Christs, the Uffizi museum.

These family palaces, pressed together in an ancient street, frozen in the modern Italian bureaucracy, are prison architecture on the ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

New York Times Book Review - Stephen King
It is...one of the two most frightening popular novels of our time, the other being The Exorcist....[A] novel full of rough bumps and little insights....[An] authentic witch's brew, eye of newt and haunch of redneck....[N]ovels that so bravely and cleverly erase the line between popular fiction and literature are very much to be prized.

The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Hannibal starts out strong, steadily improves and then, perhaps anticipating the fate of its eponymous anti-hero, goes straight to hell.

USA Today
Thomas Harris, the man who wrote the great thriller The Silence of the Lambs, serves up what can only be described as morally reprehensible slop in his book Hannibal.

When Silence came out 11 years ago, serial killers seemed more of a novelty, particularly one who was both brilliant and aristocratic.... But fantasy violence doesn't seem so entertaining after seeing teen-agers run screaming from high school. It seems sick to sit in the cozy comfort of one's living room and read for fun and pleasure about the squeals human beings make when their ears are cut off.

No one should deny Harris his right to publish novels. But bookselling is in a sick, sad place when Hannibal is this summer's must-read."

Library Journal
Although Harris's occasional lapses into baroque language and the novel's confusing, dreamy ending mar an otherwise perfect thriller, enormous patron demand makes this a necessary purchase in even the smallest public library.

Publishers Weekly
This narrative roils along a herky-jerky vector but remains always mesmerizing, as Harris's prose and insights, particularly his reveries about Hannibal, boast power and an overripe beauty.

Reader Reviews

nrvj

Thomas Harris turns a poet in his description of Hannibal. This book is not to be read for the gory of it or to understand Hannibal, it is to be read for Harris' vision of Hannibal. He takes descriptive writing to a new dizzy height.
Doug Schwartz

Although I don't read many books this had to of been the best PERIOD.......................................
Phil

A Grave Disappointment
I enjoyed reading the book from the beginning right near the end. And being a sadistic person, I was excited with what was about to happen to Dr. Lecter. Then all of a sudden, a stupid twist. I clearly don't understand what Harris was thinking of ...   Read More
Anonymous

Quite a disappointment for fans of the previous books, like myself. The writing is still great, if more affected, but the characters have become cliched and the book plods at an uneven pace. The author attempts to humanize Hannibal and even tries ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Hannibal, try these:

  • Heart-Shaped Box jacket

    Heart-Shaped Box

    by Joe Hill

    Published 2008

    About this book

    More by this author

    A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.

  • From A Buick 8 jacket

    From A Buick 8

    by Stephen King

    Published 2003

    About this book

    More by this author

    A novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.

We have 5 read-alikes for Hannibal, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Thomas Harris
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Books with similar themes


Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Become a Member

Join BookBrowse today to start
discovering exceptional books!
Find Out More

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Briar Club
    The Briar Club
    by Kate Quinn
    Kate Quinn's novel The Briar Club opens with a murder on Thanksgiving Day, 1954. Police are on the ...
  • Book Jacket: Bury Your Gays
    Bury Your Gays
    by Chuck Tingle
    Chuck Tingle, for those who don't know, is the pseudonym of an eccentric writer best known for his ...
  • Book Jacket: Blue Ruin
    Blue Ruin
    by Hari Kunzru
    Like Red Pill and White Tears, the first two novels in Hari Kunzru's loosely connected Three-...
  • Book Jacket: A Gentleman and a Thief
    A Gentleman and a Thief
    by Dean Jobb
    In the Roaring Twenties—an era known for its flash and glamour as well as its gangsters and ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The 1619 Project
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
An impactful expansion of groundbreaking journalism, The 1619 Project offers a revealing vision of America's past and present.
Book Jacket
Lady Tan's Circle of Women
by Lisa See
Lisa See's latest historical novel, inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl
    by Bart Yates

    A saga spanning 12 significant days across nearly 100 years in the life of a single man.

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

L T C O of the B

and be entered to win..

Win This Book
Win Smothermoss

Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

A haunting, imaginative, and twisting tale of two sisters and the menacing, unexplained forces that threaten them and their rural mountain community.

Enter