Eudora Welty's 'A Curtain of Green' had an enormous effect on me. But my early attempts to graft stories from the Deep South onto North of England provincialism were not successful. All were rejected.

Sacred Hunger (1992) centres on the Atlantic slave trade that moves from Liverpool to West Africa Florida and the West Indies. It was adapted as a film The Reckoning (2003) starring Paul Bettany and Willem Dafoe. – with sufficient subtlety and accuracy.

He publiBarry Unsworthd 17 novels and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.