Losing Nelson

Barry Unsworth, author of the Booker Prize-winning Sacred Hunger and the bestselling Morality Play, has long established his genius for both historical narrative and for sharply observed, fantastically odd characters and stories. In Losing Nelson, Unsworth's most brilliantly imagined novel yet and a nominee for the Booker Prize, he has enlisted all these proven talents in a way unprecedented in his earlier work.

Every day, Charles Cleasby relives the events of Lord Horatio Nelson's life. He holds no regard for year-by-year chronology, so his life is a bustle of anniversaries: a political confrontation in 1797, for instance, might be followed immediately by a climactic sea battle in 1805. He reenacts the battles in his basement on a huge blue-glass table, moving the perfectly rendered ships that represent Nelson's Royal Navy and its enemies, thus reliving Nelson's triumphs.

Losing Nelson is a novel of obsession, the story of a man unable to see himself separately from the hero he mistakenly idolizes. Cleasby is, in fact, a Nelson biographer run amok. He is convinced that Nelson — Britain's greatest admiral, who finally defeated Napoleon, and lost his own life, in the Battle of Trafalgar — is the perfect hero, but in his research he has come upon an incident of horrifying brutality in Nelson's military career that simply stumps all attempts at glorification.

Admiral Nelson, faults and all, is a hero to many, but to Cleasby he is something more. Cleasby has come to think of himself as Nelson's dark side, the fallible human flip-side of the perfect man. And so Nelson's transgression represents more than just a chink in histhesis. Further, Cleasby's new assistant, Miss Lily of Avon Secretarial Services, insists on maintaining a running criticism of Nelson as she takes dictation, not to mention the objections she voices to the isolated, sheltered way Cleasby lives his life. Something has to give, and give it does — in the most astonishing and entertaining of ways.

"Unsworth offers a new interpretation of 'historical fiction'." Booklist

"Psychodrama and historical suspense align to extraordinary effect here, entwining the two in a denouement both stunning and unspeakably sad." Kirkus Reviews

"Though filled with factual detail about Nelson and his time, this cunningly bizarre novel is more a psychological thriller than a work of historical fiction." Library Journal

A novel of obsession, this is the story of a man unable to see himself separately from the hero he mistakenly idolizes — Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain's greatest admiral.

"Stunningly original. . . . Pulpy and juicy, full of wisdom and horror." --

is a novel of obsession, the story of Charles Cleasby, a man unable to see himself separately from the hero--Lord Horatio Nelson--he mistakenly idolizes. He is, in fact, a Nelson biographer run amok. He is convinced that Nelson, Britain's greatest admiral, who lost his own life defeating Napoleon in the Battle of Trafalgar, is the perfect hero. However, in his research he has come upon an incident of horrifying brutality in Nelson's military career that simply stumps all attempts at glorification. "Books about the sea and those who sail it are much in vogue. This seems to have been set off by the surprising and much deserved popularity of Sebastian Junger's , not to mention the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian. . . . [ is] the best book of the lot."--Jonathan Yardley, Book World (1999 Critic's Choice). A Best Book of 1999; A Notable Book of 1999. Reading group guide available.

Barry Unsworth won the Booker Prize in 1992 for Sacred Hunger; his next novel, Morality Play, was a Booker nominee and a bestseller in both the United States and Great Britain. His other novels include After Hannibal, The Hide, and Pascali's Island, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was made into a feature film. He lives in Umbria with his wife and recently held the position of Visiting Fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.