What are some good fictional books about the Crusades?

Question

Im looking for a book about the crusades that is fiction but is also historicaly acurate. Got any books?

Answer 1

IVANHOE- Sir Walter Scott

Answer 2

Years ago, I read some books by Zoe Oldenbourg about the early Crusades. I think the only thing I found inaccurate was that some of the dates were stretched a bit. The books are:
The World Is Not Enough
The Cornerstone
The Heirs of the Kingdom

They are very long and very depressing, but very vivid. They follow one French family during the Crusades.

Answer 3

Try "Baudolino" by Umberto Eco. It is historically accurate. The character goes on the third and fourth crusades. The author tries to show how weak our information is about what really happened in this period, which is the late twelfth, early thirteenth century.

I am an afficianado of Byzantine history, and I have a copy of "History of the Byzantine State" by Ostrogorsky. When he gets to the 12th century, he says, "Our sources for this peroid are John Cinnamus and Nicetas Choniates." So in the fourth crusade, as Consrtantinople falls to the crusaders, whom does Baudolino meet in the cathedral of Hagia Sophia but Nicetas Choniates!

Also, I never knew that there were two stories about how Frederick Barbarossa died on the third crusade. I knew the one about how he slipped off his horse in full armor while crossing a stream and drowned before his people could get to him. Eco tells another one in which he died in a fort in what is now Turkey in a locked room mystery.

If you like this book, you may also like "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum."

Answer 4

Brethren by Robyn Young, The Shadow of God by Anthony A. Goodman Another book that isn't a novel but reads a lot like one is Dungeon, Fire, & Sword by John J. Robinson. Great subject.

Answer 5

The Jester by James Patterson, but I do not know if its totally accurate. Good story though.