Hannibal Rising - Connections, Contradictions and Inaccuracies

Connections, Contradictions and Inaccuracies

• Hannibal Lecter's documented and actual birthdate and his age when his sister died are inconsistent. The novel Hannibal firmly states in a flashback that he was six years old when his sister died; in Hannibal Rising, his age is changed to eight years old for unknown reasons. The novel attributes this to Lecter falsifying documents to confuse authorities, though the passages in Hannibal setting these events at age six appear in Lecter's own thoughts.
• No mention is made of Lecter's bizarre condition on his left hand called mid-ray duplication dactyly, or a fully functional sixth finger (duplicated middle finger).
• In the third chapter, Thomas Harris mistakenly implies Lithuanians are a Slavic people.
• Hannibal is described as listening to a Bach String Quartet, even though none of the famous Bach family have written for such an ensemble.