Seize Your Copy The Ruby In Her Navel Designed By Barry Unsworth Accessible As Ebook
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, ”
Reading Barry Unsworth's account of life inth century Sicily brings forcefuly in focus the famous George Santayana quote I used as an epigraph,
What makescentury Sicily so special and so relevant today It was, for a very short span of time, a viable multicultural, interfaith society, where Normans, Saracens, Byzantines, Jews and Papists lived together in almost harmony.
It will be brought to ruin by greed, vanity and intolerance
The main character, whose name Thurstan Beauchamp is a clear indication of his mixed Norman and French blood, is a young clerk working in a ministry Diwan dominated by Muslims.
He is an idealist, who seems ill suited for the actual job he is doing : a spy for the king, with a cover job as a purveyor of pleasures hiring dancers, singers and acrobats for the king's entertainment.
His naivety is endearing in the beginning of the story, when he expresses his admiration for the job the king is doing keeping the peace between the different ethnicities on the island, his respect for his Arab boss and his belief in the rule of law :
.
. . I was swept by a familiar love for this city of Palermo, where I had spent most of my years, for the diversity these sounds expressed, the different faiths that lived together here, the different races that jostled in the markets and laboured on the buildings that were rising everywhere, praying apart and having their cases tried in their own tongues, but all held together in unity by our great King.
The best example Thurstan can give us about what the city of Palermo has to offer is in the description of the Royal Chapel, a key setting of the novel, "where Saracens had carved the wood of the ceiling, Latins made the marble inlays, Greeks set the stones of the mosaics, all working together to make a church where our Norman King could hear the mass.
"
As a first person narrator, Thurstan can be somewhat excused for trying to paint himself in a positive light, but his later actions speak louder about his envious and vain nature, his ambition to become a knight, his gullibility and the shallowness of his fine principles when confronted with life and death situations .
Overall, his human weakness is what will probably reconcile the reader with the wrong decisions Thurstan makes and his youth might excuse his lack of subtlety in the cloak amp dagger business and in the romantic dillema between the two women in his life : the elegant and sophisticated Lady Alicia, and the exotic Yazidi belly dancer Nesrin.
She could not have so deceived me if I had not deceived myself she could not have played me false if I had not aided her in it.
I had fashioned her in the form of my desires, I had made her shining, lustrous from our childhood and the time of my hope, bright with the future when she would make that hope come true, a creature of light, not her own, bestowed on her.
She had no light of her own, . .
All in all, this was an informative, multilayered historical adventure, more serious than its unfortunately chosen title might suggest, that manages to recreate one of the most exciting moments in early Middle Age history, touching on still relevant issues regarding a multicultural society, coupled with a dramatic coming of age story of a young man who learns to see the rust, the dirt and the blood hiding under the shiny armours of the knights and under the immaculate
robes of the monks.
This disillusionment with both government and religion is another factor that remains relevant in the present day, when young men and women must find the strength and the moral guidance they need in other institutions or creeds.
I have learned that, . . there had never been a silver barge to keep afloat, that this King to whom I had woved my service, was a man with a face like other faces I had seen, the face of one who lived with us in the dark water, among the other creatures feasting and fighting there.
Barry Unsworth captivated me previously with "The Songs of Kings" and with "Morality Play", and confirmed his status as one of the best in the field with the present historical novel.
Next on my radar is "Sacred Hunger", dealing with another thorny subject slavery,
Unsworth not quite at the top of his form with this one, but the setting was fascinating to me: the Norman kingdom of Sicily in theth century under Roger II.
Under Roger's rule Greek and Latin Christians, Jews and Muslims all live in harmony,
The protagonist, Thurstan, son of a landless Norman knight and a Saxon mother works in the Diwan of Controlthe finance office, but some call it the Diwan of Secrets.
His superior is a Muslim, Yusuf, Thurstan is the Purveyor of Spectacles obtains entertainment for the king and also on Yusuf's orders will carry money for payment for information from one place to another, On one journey from Palermo to Calabria, Thurstan finds a marvellous troupe of belly dancers and musicians he sends back to dance for the king, One dancer, Nesrin, catches his eye, When a boy, Thurstan had been fostered by another noble family to prepare for knighthood, In Calabria, he and his childhood sweetheart meet each other after years, Meddling Latin clergy and Frankish nobility enter the kingdom and try to upset the balance by influencing the king to suppress the minorities, There is much treachery, spying, and deceit, Suffice it to say, things are not as straightforward as they seem , The story was boring for long stretches, The climax was certainly a surprise to me!
It was very well written and we got a feel for the opulence of the royal court, the nobility, and the palaces.
Thurstan was naive, but certainly engaging, Yusuf was the perfect mentor, This novel is set inPalermo, Sicily, where power struggles between East and West have left King Roger hard pressed to maintain his throne, Both the Pope and the Bishop of Rome refuse to recognize his rule, and Conrad Hohenstaufen ruler of the west and Manuel Comnenus ruler of the east are threatening to invade Sicily to secure their powers.
Palermo has always been tolerant to various ethnic communities, but a Christian group is making false accusations against Muslims, Jews, and other "outsiders" to take over power,
Thurstan Beauchamp narrates this story, He is a young man still, the son of a Norman knight and a Saxon mother, He works in the Diwan of Control, the central financial office at the palace, where his employer is Yusuf Ibn Mansur, a Muslim man with political savvy and of unimpeachable honesty who is willing to help Thurstan become influential if he can avoid falling into one of the dangerous political games the various factions are playing against each other.
Traveling throughout Europe as "Purveyor of Pleasures and Shows," Thurstan finds a group of five Yazidis, including Nesrin, a belly dancer with uncommon talent, and immediately hires them to come to Palermo to perform for the king.
He is drawn to Nesrin's great beauty and allure, but things take yet another turn when he meets again with the Lady Alicia on the same trip, once his great love when he was still a boy and she then just a girl also.
Now she has returned from the land of Jerusalem as a widow of considerable wealth, and seems just as taken with Thurstan, who finds his love for her has not abated over the years.
Further complicating matters, we learn early on that Thurstan's most cherished dream has been to become a knight and fight in the crusades, as his father has done before him, though this opportunity was taken away from him just when it seemed about to be realised.
Now with Lady Alicia's return on the scene, many opportunities beckon, The novel builds up at a moderate pace, all the while filled with period details which inform us about aspects of daily life inth century Palermo, Thurstan, narrating in the first person from the vantage point of a period after the events have taken place, is a personable main character, whom we cannot help but empathise with though he makes many grave gaffes and mistakes, and much as his naivety and youth show he has yet much to learn, we see the events though his eyes before he had gained the advantage of hindsight, so that the reader is offered only glimpses of the whole, until a complex mystery is revealed.
A jewel of a book which I can't wait to reread to pick up on all the fine intricate details I may have missed the first time, I also loved Andrew Sachs' narration in the audio version, A wellearned five for this gem,
November,