Thurston is a young man working as a procurer of entertainments for the King of Sicily under the direction of a Moslem man who he feels much respect for. Sicily has a diverse culture with Moslem, Eastern Christians, and Catholics living together in relative peace. However, due to the failed crusade of the French King relations between the Christians and Moslems have become tense.

Thurstan's boss is aware of the increased feelings against him among those surrounding the King. The plot thickens as Thurstan is sent on a mysterious mission supposedly to uncover plots against the King. He meets a woman recently widowed whom he knew and loved as a young man; they swear their love to each other and Thurstan finds himself seemingly "climbing the ladder" to higher positions. However, he has been cruelly tricked as he is forced later to betray his employer.

The ruby in her navel refers to a group of musicians and belly dances who he finds on his mission. Nesrin is a beautiful belly dancer who he is attracted to in spite of his love for the first women.

I enjoyed almost all of the book; however, as the workings of the plot began to unfold it was hard to sort through (probably because I was just tired of reading). Still liked the writing and particularly the setting. Good author.

A lot of the tension between Moslem and Christianity demonstrates that things haven't changed and the quest for power and access to power remains just as strong as ever. ( )

A mediados del siglo XII, Palermo se había convertido en crisol de civilizaciones, razas, lenguas y religiones, donde musulmanes, judíos, griegos o normandos vivían en aparente armonía.
Thurstan de Beauchamp, es hijo de una caballero normando pero trabaja para un musulmán al servicio del rey Rogelio de Sicilia; lleva años enamorado de lady Alicia, pero no podrá evitar caer en las redes de la bella bailarina Nesrin. Con el corazón dividido y en intenso debate interior, Thurstan se ve arrastrado a una perversa trama que amenza la vida de su mentor y de su rey en la que sólo uno saldrá indemne.
Tensiones políticas y religiosas, erotismo, espionaje, soberbia recreación histórica, personajes fascinantes y una trama absorbente hacen de esta novela una lectural irresistible.

I enjoyed this a great deal. It was an experience, not just a story and a telling, but all of that and more - a world, a mindset, an exploration - and deeply satisfying all up.

The first thing that grabbed me was the strength of the first-person narrator. There's a deep and stark and involved style to his voice that helps seat the book in its time and place (more about this later) but also establishes the novel firmly as Thurstan-telling-his-story. I have endless impatience with books that a first-person without a reason - i.e. why and how is this person telling me their story? - but this one does it flat out with what appears to be bald-faced honesty, that later gains a layer of knowing extra meaning (which I love).

And through the telling, the reader comes to understand intrinsically - so much more deeply than merely being told - some aspects of the 12th-century Mediterranean that underpin the book: that abstract thought is underdeveloped, and the concept of visualising and imagining one close to magic; that this is a world in which simplicity and complexity war, or at least overlap; and that while it could be said that the Dark Ages are ending, there has never been such hate as is now welling up.

Amidst all of this, I found the entwined stories of political intrigue and Thurstan's emotional getting-of-wisdom to be deeply satisfying, in that way I like best where things reveal to have been just what I thought, but even more so and with added twists I had not seen coming. And while I had some slight distresses about the way Alicia was depicted at the end of the day, Nesrin was pretty magnificent. ( )

Readable, but not as gripping as I hoped it would be. It's an interesting fictional excursion into Norman Sicily, but I found it difficult to build up any kind of emotional attachment to the story or characters. ( )

I can only join in the praise for this fine Unsworth novel. He produces the most intricate plots in such well-researched historical settings. A parallel with contemporary world affairs makes this novel even more worth the effort of reading it.