Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70273 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Synopsis
The Court of King Roger in Twelfth century Sicily simmers with the volatile passions of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Latins and Greeks. Among them, a young Norman called Thurstan Beauchamp finds employment under Yusuf, a Muslim who holds the Christian king's purse strings. But while Thurstan wishes to be made a Knight, he has little taste for courtly intrigues and instead divides his time between the divine - in the shape of childhood sweetheart Lady Alicia - and the delightful: the sensuous and exotic dancer Nesrin. However, in his pursuit of love and knighthood, Thurstan has yet to appreciate that he may also be a pawn in a far more deadly game...

Customer Reviews

A Mediterranean romance
At the heart of this novel is the age-old tension between Christendom and Islam. Set after the second failed crusade in twelfth-century Sicily which is a melting pot of Christians and Moslems - mainly Normans, Latins, Franks, Turks and Arabs. King Roger is seen to encourage all to work together in harmony.
We are introduced to Thurstan, whose father gave up the rat race to become a monk, thus removing Thurstan's chances of knighthood, leaving him to work as a procurer of entertainers for the king. Thurstan is rather an innocent and is easily manipulated by those in power and when he gets invited to a gathering at the king's country retreat and meets his childhood sweetheart Alicia, he falls for her again and thus starts a whole chain of events. Meanwhile he found a troupe of belly dancers and musicians and entranced by the dancer Nesrin, brings them back to Palermo to perform for the king.
This is a novel of romance and high intrigue, and of a young man gaining adulthood. Thurstan is a thoughtful chap, and as the tale is told in the first person, we get all his thinking written down on the page.
Underneath all the pondering, is a first rate historical thriller with a good love element trying to get out, however it does rather get bogged down in the philosophising.

Impeccable historical fiction
"The ruby in her navel" is a delight to read! It pleased and impressed me as no other historical novel has done in a very long time, and many are the reasons why. First of all there's the setting: 12th-century Sicily was completely unknown to me, and Unsworth depicts and describes it as if he's been there. Particularly the fact that Christians, Muslims, Jews, Byzantines etc all tried to co-exist there made, in real life, the ideal setting for intrigues at court and makes, in the novel, for countless twists and turns in the plot.

Secondly, and this is to me the hallmark of a truly exceptional historical novel, what happens to the characters and specifically to the protagonist Thurstan Beauchamp could have happened anywhere and at any time because it is really a superb story of love, hope, betrayal, deceit and deception which costs Thurstan dearly but ultimately leaves him a more experienced and more mature man.

Barry Unsworth's previous works already set a very high standard but this his latest novel doesn't fail to live up to that standard making it very hard indeed to choose a favorite, they're quite simply all very very good.

Excellent
Unsworth is a much underrated writer. Yes it's historical fiction - historic romance even - but this is Patrick O'Brian rather than Georgette Heyer.

The novel is illuminating on an aspect of history that is, I am sure, obscure to most people. It has a rewardingly complex plot for a relatively short book. Unsworth is obviously intending to make a point about the lessons that the twenty-first century can learn from the mistakes of the twelth. The surface reading is that we should live in peace with one another. The sub-text is perhaps that we should look to the motives of those who try tell us that we cannot so do.