Hannibal Rising

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For the film based on the novel see Hannibal Rising (film)

**Title** **Hannibal Rising**

Author	Thomas Harris
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Mystery, Thriller
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Released	5 December 2006
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	323
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-33941-0
Preceded by	Hannibal

Hannibal Rising is a novel written by Thomas Harris, the fourth in a series featuring his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter. The novel, a prequel to Harris' Lecter novels, chronicles the iconic serial killer's childhood and early adulthood. The novel was released on December 5, 2006 with an initial printing of at least 1.5 million copies^[1] and had a mixed response, many thinking that the book reduced Lecter to a simple psychological case^{[citation needed]}. A CD version has also been released, with Harris reading the text.

1 Synopsis
2 The Story's Origins
3 Other titles
4 Connections and contradictions
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Lecter is eight years old at the beginning of the novel (1941), living in Lecter Castle in Lithuania, when Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union turns the Baltic region into a part of the bloodiest front line of World War II. Lecter, his sister Mischa, and his parents escape to the family's hunting lodge in the woods to elude the advancing German troops. After three years, the Nazis are finally driven out of the countries now occupied by the Soviet Union. During their retreat, however, they destroy a Soviet tank that had stopped at the Lecter family's lodge looking for water. The explosion kills everyone but Lecter and Mischa. They survive in the cottage until six former Lithuanian militiamen, led by a Nazi collaborator named Vladis Grutas, storm and loot it. Finding no other food, they kill and cannibalize a young boy they have captured and held, chained, in the barn, and then Lecter's young sister Mischa to the despair and agony of young Hannibal who has to watch her being dragged, screaming his name, suspended in the air by her arms. Lecter is beaten with a log as he hears an axe end the life of Mischa and blacks out and is later found wandering and mute by a Soviet tank crew that takes him back to Lecter Castle, which is now a Soviet orphanage.

After two years, Lecter's uncle Robert, a painter living in France, comes to Lithuania and takes the boy to live with him and his wife, the Lady Murasaki Shikibu. While in France, Lecter flourishes as a student. He commits his first murder as a teenager, killing a local butcher who insults his aunt, in a series of events leading to his uncle's death. He is suspected of the butcher's murder by Inspector Popil, a French detective who also lost his family to the war. Thanks in part to his aunt's intervention, however, Lecter escapes responsibility for the crime.

Lecter divides his time between medical school in France and hunting those who killed and cannibalized his sister. One by one, he crosses paths with Grutas' men, killing them all in the most inventively gruesome ways possible. Eventually, Popil arrests Lecter, but Lecter is freed when popular support for his dispatch of war criminals combines with a lack of hard evidence. The novel ends with Lecter going to America to begin his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

[edit] The Story's Origins

The February 22, 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly features a quote that suggests that the only reason Thomas Harris wrote the story was out of the fear that a Lecter prequel/origin story would inevitably be written without his involvement. "Hannibal Rising" film producer Dino De Laurentiis said I say to Thomas, 'If you don't do [the prequel], I will do it with someone else...I don't want to lose this franchise. And the audience wants it...' He said, 'No. I'm sorry.' And I said, 'I will do it with somebody else.' And then he said, 'Let me think about it. I will come up with an idea.'

[edit] Other titles

Other working titles for the book were Behind the Mask: The Blooding of Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal 4, Hannibal IV, The Lecter Variations, The Lecter Variation: The Story of Young Hannibal Lecter, Young Hannibal, The Adventures of Young Hannibal, and Young Hannibal: Behind the Mask (which was used in a few translations).

[edit] Connections and contradictions

Hannibal Lecter's documented and actual birthdate and age where his sister died are not consistent. It is stated that he fabricated dates in order to avoid capture. In the novel Hannibal, he dreams of being six years old when his sister died; in Hannibal Rising, he is 11 when the tragedy occurs.
No mention is made of Lecter's bizarre condition on his left hand called mid-ray duplication polydactyly, or a fully functional sixth finger (duplicated middle finger).
In Red Dragon protagonist Will Graham says that, as a child, Lecter displayed sadism toward animals. In Rising, however, Lecter exhibits a degree of compassion to a group of swans and his family's horse.
In Hannibal, Lecter dreams of seeing Mischa's baby teeth in a reeking stool pit after the deserters' men kill her. In Rising, he has similar visions, but when he later visits Mischa's remains before giving her a dignified burial, he notes that all her teeth are intact.
A Dragunov Sniper Rifle is mentioned in the book multiple times. It is first mentioned in a sequence taking place in 1946 when Lecter is 13 years old, and then again in 1951 when he is 18. The Dragunov Sniper Rifle is based on the AK-47 and wasn't invented until 1958.