Morality Play Anchor Books 2012 Barry Unsworth by Barry Unsworth 9780525434092, 0525434097, B005X0K4Q2 instant download after payment.

Barry Unsworth’s detective story set in the 14th century, a time of calamity such as few others have been, marked by war, plague and fear of hellfire.

“A learned, witty, satisfying entertainment.”  —  The New York Times

Nicholas Barber, a footloose young cleric, has left his diocese without his Bishop’s leave. He has sung in taverns, he has gambled away his holy relics, and he has committed adultery. Now, to compound his sins, he has joined a troupe of travelling players, a thing expressly forbidden to members of the clergy. Trouble enough, but nothing compared to what happens when the company decides to enact the murder of the young boy called Thomas Wells.

“A bravura performance... A thought-provoking comedy on the eternal sameness of disaster and the recurrent uses we put it to in art.” —  The New York Times Book Review 

“A dramatic meditation on the relationship between life and play.” —  San Francisco Chronicle

Barry Unsworth published 17 novels and is best known for his historical fiction. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. In the last years of his life, he lived in Perugia, a city in the Umbria region of Italy, with his second wife. His novel After Hannibal is a fictionalised description of his efforts at settlement in the Italian countryside.