Sacred Hunger is a powerful book set during the years 1752-1765. The story revolves around the merchant familly Kemp that enters into the slave trade - allowing passage on the slaver "The Liverpool Merchant" to the cousin Mathew Paris, a doctor recently released from prison. Unsworths book explores the slave trade, highlighting the rationale, in painful detail - and paints a sordid picture of the merchant mind of the time. "The Sacred Hunger" is allowed to emcompass everything, even human life.

For anyone interested in history in general, and Africa in particular "The Sacred Hunger" is an essential but painful read. It leaves you touched, deeply, on behalf of the millions of life lost to the inhuman trade.