Barry Unsworth

Barry Unsworth, who has died aged 81 of lung cancer, was an acclaimed author whose rich works of historical fiction were the products of prodigious research.

He wrote a total of 17 novels and was nominated for the Booker Prize three times, winning it in 1992 for Sacred Hunger, a story of greed set amid the 18th-century Atlantic slave trade. He shared the award that year with Michael Ondaatje, who won for The English Patient.

He was born in Wingate, a mining village in County Durham, and graduated from Manchester University in 1951 after becoming the first in his family to attend college. He lived in France for a year teaching English and travelled in Greece and Turkey during the 1960s, lecturing at the universities of Athens and Istanbul, where he began writing fiction. He published his first novel, The Partnership, in 1966, which told the story of two men whose business relationship is destroyed by the erotic attraction of one to the other. His second novel, The Greeks Have a Word for It (1967), explored his experiences teaching in Greece, and satirised aspects of the British Council.

Among his best known works were Pascali's Island (1980), set in the summer of 1908 on an unnamed Ottoman Aegean island; Stone Virgin (1986), set in Renaissance Venice; Losing Nelson (1999), about a modern-day writer obsessed with the great admiral; The Songs of the Kings (2003), which retells the story of the Trojan War; Morality Play (1995), about a band of strolling actors in 14th-century Yorkshire; and, most recently, The Quality of Mercy, published last year, and which continues the narrative of Sacred Hunger.

Pascali's Island was made into a 1988 film, starring Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren, and The Reckoning (as Morality Play was retitled for the screen) was released in 2003 and starred Paul Bettany and Willem Dafoe.

He did not start to write historical fiction until his sixth novel, Pascali's Island, which was the first of his novels to be shortlisted for the Booker.

Unsworth, who moved to Umbria, Italy, many years ago, said of this shift: "I don't think it has been so much a choice as a sort of gradual process determined by accidents of circumstance.

"I spent most of the 60s, when I was starting to try to write novels, living and working in Greece and Turkey.

"These are countries where the ancient past is interfused with the daily present, and I remember being struck with wonder at the constant sense of continuity and connection, the reminders that lie in wait for you at every turn."

His move was also precipitated by living away from the UK for so long and what he described as a "certain loss of interest in British life and society" and a loss of confidence in his ability to describe modern British life.

His work, which was at times criticised for being obsessed with historical detail, is infused with reflections on morality and a sympathy for the oppressed and Unsworth said looking back in time enabled him to use the past as a distant mirror and to say things about our human condition.

His first marriage to Valerie Moor ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Aira, three daughters from his first marriage, six grandchildren and a brother.