Five top books about the Crusades

Justin Cartwright's novels include the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers and the acclaimed White Lightning, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award, The Promise of Happiness, winner of the 2005 Hawthorden Prize and the acclaimed The Song Before It Is Sung. His Other People’s Money was named Spear’s Book Award Novel of the Year and included in Kirkus Reviews’ Best of Fiction Top 25. Cartwright's new novel is Lion Heart.

For the Telegraph, he named his five best books about the Crusades, including:

In The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1986), Amin Maalouf gives a brief but very interesting account of the Crusades from the Muslim side, often from within Saladin’s camp. While most of the Christian reporters had a religious motive in their accounts, many of the Arabs were more pragmatic. One chronicler even explained why Richard had 30,000 Muslims massacred after the fall of Acre.

Read about the other books on Cartwright's list.

--Marshal Zeringue