SOURCE: "Meet the Neighbors," in Chicago Tribune Books, March 9, 1997, p. 4.

In the following review, Schwartz finds the characterizations in After Hannibal particularly intriguing and rewarding to the reader.

After Hannibal, the latest novel from Booker Prize-winner Barry Unsworth (Morality Play, Sacred Hunger), is a deliciously keen observation of strangers in a strange land, deliciously keen observation of strangers in a strange land. Unsworth reminds the reader of Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym; he shares their understated wit and their talent for clean and stylish description. This contemporary novel even owes debt to E. M. Forster in its portrayal of foreigners at sea in Italy. While Forster may go deeper into the minds of his creations, Unsworth seems to have more fun gleefully setting his characters loose on one another and recounting the ensuing havoc: marriages broken, alliances formed, houses destroyed, secrets unburied.

Unsworth's people live near Perugia's Lake...