The Ruby in Her Navel : A Novel of Love and Intrigue in the 12th Century

If one had the misfortune to be born in the 12th century, then Sicily was the place to be. The Normans had conquered the island, finding it effectively divided in two, inhabited partly by Arabs, partly by Greeks. From the outset, they had given both these communities major responsibility in the government. As well as Latin and Norman French, Greek and Arabic were official languages of the developing state; and when in 1130 that state became a kingdom under Roger II, it was already an example to all Europe of cultural and religious toleration. The chief minister and head of the all-important navy was always a Greek (our word admiral derives through Norman Sicily from the Arab title of emir), while the treasury was entrusted to Arabs, whose mathematics were better than anyone else's. Roger himself was as unlike a Norman knight as it is possible to be. Brought up in Palermo by an Italian mother in a world of Greek and Muslim tutors, he was a southerner indeed, an oriental through and through; and the chapel that he built in the Royal Palace is one of the wonders of the world. The ground plan is that of a western basilica; but the walls are encrusted with Byzantine mosaics as fine as any in existence, while the wooden roof, in the classical Islamic style, would do credit to Cairo or Damascus. Here as nowhere else the Norman achievement is given visual expression. But of course it was all too good to last. The independent Norman kingdom of Sicily endured only 64 years, ending soon after the death of the last legitimate king, William the Good. But perhaps that kingdom, swallowed up by the Holy Roman Empire, carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It was too heterogeneous, too eclectic, too cosmopolitan. It hardly tried or perhaps it had no time to develop any natural traditions of its own. And it paid the price. Here, then, is the tragedy that forms the backdrop to the Booker-longlisted The Ruby in her Navel. Nowadays the story of Norman Sicily is largely and undeservedly forgotten; knowing it and loving it as I do, I picked the book up with some trepidation (which, I may say, was hardly diminished by its appalling title). But I have long admired its author, so I plunged in and was instantly, and almost literally, transported. Now, it is not easy to transport a reader 1,000 years into the past, into a country and cultural climate 1,000 miles away from his own; I can only say that Unsworth succeeded triumphantly. His hero, born in England of a Norman father but brought to Sicily as a child, tells his story in the first person. It begins with him working as a civil servant in the office of a high-ranking Arab; he is sent on a mission to Calabria, where he meets a troupe of travelling dancers from eastern Anatolia (one of them the owner of the eponymous navel) and where he is accidentally reunited with a childhood sweetheart, now unhappily married. There follows a somewhat picaresque story of love, betrayals and attempted regicide, all of it set against the constant rivalries of Latin and Greek, Christian and Muslim the latter further exacerbated by the recent catastrophic second crusade. It is a good story, which holds the attention from start to finish; but its real strength lies in the power of the author's historical imagination. He made me feel what it was actually like to live, work and travel in Norman Sicily. There is no whitewashing; almost all the characters, including the narrator himself, are to a greater or lesser degree unpleasant. But life, one feels, was never dull, if one had the misfortune to be born in the 12th century. Set in the twelfth century against the backdrop of the Crusades and during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, THE RUBY IN HER NAVEL opens in a Sicilian society in which Latin and Greek, Arab and Jew lived together in harmony. The novel tells the story of how the war between Islam and Christendom impinges on the mind and heart of Thurstan Beauchamp, a young Norman and would-be Knight at the Court of King Roger in Palermo. Known for his loyalty but divided between the ideals of chivalry and the harsh political realities of his tumultuous times, Thurstan is dispatched to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king. During his journeys, he encounters the woman he loved as a youth, Lady Alicia, now returned a widow from the Holy Land; at the same time, he is gripped by the earthy sensuality of the dancer, Nesrin, whose troupe he brings to the Court to dance for the king. In a compelling tale of love, passion, intrigue, and treachery, Thurstan finds himself caught in a tangle of plots, counter-plots, and deceptions, which force him to question the nature of his ambition and the folly of uncritical reverence for authority. With the exquisite prose and masterful narrative drive that have earned him widespread acclaim, Barry Unsworth transports the reader to a distant past filled with deception and mystery, and whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today Barry Unsworth evokes a distant past filled with deception and mystery, whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today.Italy in the Middle Ages. Latin and Greek, Arab and Jew live together in precarious harmony in the kingdom of Palermo. Thurstan Beauchamp, a Christian son of a Norman knight, works for Yusuf, a Muslim Arab, in the palace’s central finance office. They manage blackmail, bribes and the gathering of secret information for the king. As the peace and prosperity of the kingdom is threatened, internally and externally, Thurstan is dispatched to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king."A richly imagined novel of the Middle Ages, filled with questions of race, God, and fidelity, from the Booker Prize-winning Unsworth (The Song of the Kings, 2003, etc.)... Unsworth’s luscious history is ripe territory for a dialogue on the ever-present struggle against intolerance, a seemingly inevitable human frailty." - Kirkus ReviewsBarry Unsworth was born in London. He published 17 novels, and is best known for his historical fiction. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. In the last years of his life he lived in Perugia, a city in the Umbria region of Italy, with his second wife. His novel After Hannibal is a fictionalised description of his efforts at settlement in the Italian countryside. Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, *The Ruby in Her Navel* is a tale in which the conflicts of the past portend the present. The novel opens in Palermo, in which Latin and Greek, Arab and Jew live together in precarious harmony. Thurstan Beauchamp, the Christian son of a Norman knight, works for Yusuf, a Muslim Arab, in the palace’s central finance office, a job which includes the management of blackmail and bribes, and the gathering of secret information for the king. But the peace and prosperity of the kingdom is being threatened, internally as well as externally. Known for his loyalty but divided between the ideals of chivalry and the harsh political realities of his tumultuous times, Thurstan is dispatched to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king. During his journeys, he encounters the woman he loved as a youth; and the renewed promise of her love, as well as the mysterious presence of an itinerant dancing girl, sends him on a spiritual odyssey that forces him to question the nature of his ambition and the folly of uncritical reverence for authority. With the exquisite prose and masterful narrative drive that have earned him widespread acclaim, Barry Unsworth transports the reader to a distant past filled with deception and mystery, and whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today. "Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, The Ruby in Her Navel is a tale in which the conflicts of the past portend the present. The novel opens in Palermo, in which Latin and Greek, Arab and Jew live together in precarious harmony. Thurstan Beauchamp, the Christian son of a Norman knight, works for Yusuf, a Muslim Arab, in the palace's central finance office, a job that includes the management of blackmail and bribes, and the gathering of secret information for the king." "But the peace and prosperity of the kingdom is being threatened, internally as well as externally. Known for his loyalty but divided between the ideals of chivalry and the harsh political realities of his tumultuous times, Thurstan is dispatched to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king. During his journeys, he encounters the woman he loved as a youth; and the renewed promise of her love, as well as the mysterious presence of an itinerant dancing girl, sends him on a spiritual odyssey that forces him to question the nature of his ambition and the folly of uncritical reverence for authority."--BOOK JACKET. Thurstan, a young Norman and would-be Knight at the Court of King Roger in Palermo, has been in love since boyhood with Lady Alicia, now returned a widow from the Holy Land. At the same time, he is enthralled by the earthy sensuality of the dancer, Nesrin, whose troupe he brings to Court to dance for the King. In a compelling tale of love, passion, intrigue and treachery, Thurstan finds himself caught in a tangle of plots, counter-plots and deceptions that threaten to destroy him. Set in twelfth-century against the backdrop of the Crusades, Barry Unsworth's brilliant new novel tells the story of how the war between Islam and Christendom impinges on both Thurstan's mind and his heart. His journey towards freedom and love, driven along by the forces of history in the making, is both moving and unforgettable

"Captivating, sensuous, and immensely moving.... This is Barry Unsworth, the master of resonant historical fiction, on top form."—Jim Crace

The Washington Post - David Anthony Durham

The novel's strongest suit is that the convoluted plot lends suspense right up to the final pages. Thurstan manages to shake off his self-pity long enough to grapple with the situation he helped create. The climactic scene has a decidedly cinematic, thriller-like feel to it, and it's refreshing to finally see Thurstan taking action.

Like the best historical fiction writers, Unsworth tells his story while also fleshing out the backdrop with details that ground us in the moment and make it tangibly real. He makes his characters' individual experiences representative of larger concerns.