Hannibal Rising

Hannibal Rising is a psychological horror novel by the American writer Thomas Harris, published in 2006 and the fourth of his novels about Hannibal Lecter.

The book opens in Lithuania in 1941, when Hannibal Lecter is eight and the castle his family owns becomes part of the war's path: his parents are killed and the child is left alone in the winter that follows. After the war he makes his way to France, where he is taken in by his uncle's Japanese widow, Lady Murasaki, and begins to study medicine. What he does with the rest of his youth is governed by the memory of what happened at the castle and by his determination to find the men responsible and deal with them personally, and the novel follows the steps he takes towards that decision.

Harris wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation released in 2007, and this book stands first in the chronology of the series even though it was published last. It is the shortest of the four novels and the only one set entirely before the events of the others.