Product DescriptionHe is one of the most haunting characters - in all of literature. At last, the evolution of his evil is revealed. Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him. Hannibal's uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle's beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki. Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal. With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. But Hannibal's demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn. He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death's prodigy.Amazon.com ReviewDiscover the origins of one of the most feared villains of all time in Thomas Harris'sHannibal Rising, a novel that promises to reveal the "evolution of Hannibal Lecter's evil." Thomas Harris first introduced readers to Hannibal Lecter in , a tale wrapped around FBI agent Will Graham (the man who hunted Lecter down) and his ability to "get inside the mind of the killer." Graham consults Dr. Lecter (the man who nearly killed him) on the case, and the legend of the nefarious Dr. Lecter was born. Harris's masterful and mesmerizing follow up, wowed fans, but it was Jonathan Demme's terrifying, Oscar-winning (Best Actor, Actress, Director, Picture and Adapted Screenplay) , and Anthony Hopkins's extraordinary (and arguably over the top) performance that made "Hannibal the Cannibal" a household name. , the third book in the Lecter saga made Lecter the prey and seemingly wrapped up the tale of the cannibalistic psychiatrist, but never revealed the source of the doctor's...gifts. Fans have been waiting decades to find out how the good doctor became "death's prodigy," makingHannibal Rising one of the most anticipated books of 2006 (and ).--Daphne DurhamHannibal Rising: An ExcerptPrologue The door to Dr. Hannibal Lecter's memory palace is in the darkness at the center of his mind and it has a latch that can be found by touch alone. This curious portal opens on immense and well-lit spaces, early baroque, and corridors and chambers rivaling in number those of the Topkapi Museum. Everywhere there are exhibits, well-spaced and lighted, each keyed to memories that lead to other memories in geometric progression. Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter's earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted Attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like. The palace is a construction begun early in Hannibal's student life. In his years of confinement he improved and enlarged his palace, and its riches sustained him for long periods while warders denied him his books. Here in the hot darkness of his mind, let us feel together for the latch. Finding it, let us elect for music in the corridors and, looking neither left nor right, go to the Hall of the Beginning where the displays are most fragmentary. We will add to them what we have learned elsewhere, in war records and police records, from interviews and forensics and the mute postures of the dead. Robert Lecter's letters, recently unearthed, may help us establish the vital statistics of Hannibal, who altered dates freely to confound the authorities and his chroniclers. By our efforts we may watch as the beast within turns from the teat and, working upwind, enters the world. Chapter 6 Lothar heard it first as he drew water, the roar of an engine in low gear and cracking of branches. He left the bucket on the well