Pascali’s Island
Synopsis
It is the summer of 1908, on a Greek island off the coast of Asia Minor, a small particle of the vast decaying Ottoman Empire. On the island, a Levantine informer, Pascali, in the pay of the Ottoman authorities, has for twenty years been sending in his reports to Constantinople - reports never acknowledged, never acted upon. Now the Greeks on the island have discovered what he is; his days are numbered.
Author Biography
Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in Durham. He travelled extensively in Greece and Turkey during the 1960s, teaching at the Universities of Istanbul and Athens. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His first novel, The Partnership, was published in 1966. It was followed by The Greeks Have a Word For It (1967), The Hide (1970), and Mooncranker’s Gift (1973), winner of the Heinemann Award. Pascali’s Island (1980) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was later adapted as a film starring Ben Kingsley. His tenth novel, Sacred Hunger (1992), was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1992. Barry Unsworth lives in Umbria, Italy. He was awarded an honorary Litt.D. by Manchester University in 1998.
