Here are 52 books that Fortune's Child fans have personally recommended if you like
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John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium ignited my passion for the Byzantines in the early 2000s. I knew little about them before reading that book; now I rarely read any other topic. I have always loved historical fiction and was dismayed to find so few books about the Byzantines. Once I read about the remarkable life of Anna Dalassena I realized I had found a character to write about and remedy that shortage. I am presently working on my fifth book and third novel, which will be about Anna’s son, Emperor Alexios I Comnenus. I also have a book of short stories and a brief Byzantine history.
I had never looked at or had an interest in graphic novels until I saw this graphic novel about the mother of one of the Byzantine Empire’s most important rulers, Basil II. But if there was ever going to be one I would read, it had to be a Byzantine one! I loved it! The vivid artwork in this book is superb and tells of Theophano’s life from innkeeper’s daughter to wife of not one, but two emperors. If you want to ease into Byzantine historical fiction, this graphic novel is a great places to start.
A fairytale marriage that goes terribly wrong, a ruling dynasty struggling to keep everything together by having overly ambitious palace officials do the dirty work, and prominent Roman generals who dream of taking the throne for themselves.
This explosive mixture of occurrences takes place in the 10th century Byzantine Empire. An era of territorial resurgence and Imperial extravagance, but also an era of dynastic intrigue and endless plotting for the ultimate prize. The Roman throne.
During that time, an ordinary girl, marries the heir to the throne, enters the palace and becomes Theophano, an ambitious woman ready to climb the…
John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium ignited my passion for the Byzantines in the early 2000s. I knew little about them before reading that book; now I rarely read any other topic. I have always loved historical fiction and was dismayed to find so few books about the Byzantines. Once I read about the remarkable life of Anna Dalassena I realized I had found a character to write about and remedy that shortage. I am presently working on my fifth book and third novel, which will be about Anna’s son, Emperor Alexios I Comnenus. I also have a book of short stories and a brief Byzantine history.
Simon Turney’s novel, The Bear of Byzantium, covers a period of time in late 1041 to late 1042 that I wrote about in my own book. This was a real-life Game of Thrones period with stupendous Viking members of the Imperial Varangian Guard such as Harald Hardrada, a dying emperor, a spurned empress, a conniving heir, and a crafty Viking wise-woman foretelling the future. Turney’s battle scenes will have you believing you are there manning the Great Palace’s walls with the Varangians, looking down on the streets of Constantinople seething with rioting mobs ready to execute a hated emperor.
The wolves of Odin sail to the centre of the world: Constantinople.
AD 1041. After successfully avenging the death of his father, Halfdan and the crew of the Sea Wolf seek adventure in strange new lands, far from their Scandinavian home.
They join the fleet of Harald Hardrada, the legendary Viking commander, sailing back to Constantinople from the battlefields of Georgia. There they join the Varangians, the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors populated almost exclusively by Viking warriors. But Constantinople has changed during Hardrada's long absence.
The Emperor, Michael IV, is ailing visibly, and powerful factions in his court…
John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium ignited my passion for the Byzantines in the early 2000s. I knew little about them before reading that book; now I rarely read any other topic. I have always loved historical fiction and was dismayed to find so few books about the Byzantines. Once I read about the remarkable life of Anna Dalassena I realized I had found a character to write about and remedy that shortage. I am presently working on my fifth book and third novel, which will be about Anna’s son, Emperor Alexios I Comnenus. I also have a book of short stories and a brief Byzantine history.
Anne Perry is a superb mystery writer who ventured once into the Byzantine world with this novel and I am so glad she did. The story takes place in 1273, twelve years after the overthrow of the Latin rulers who had occupied Constantinople since the horrific attack by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The city still struggles to recover and a young woman, Anna Lascaris, who has learned medicine from her father, decides to disguise herself as a eunuch to more easily find out who framed her brother for murder, which resulted in his exile to a distant monastery. Poisonous political intrigue swirls around Anna/Anastasius as she practices the healing arts while searching for clues about who was the true killer.
A brilliant standalone novel from Anne Perry, the undisputed master of the Victorian mystery.
1273 - the gorgeous, cosmopolitan and enlightened city of Byzantium is in acute danger. Only an alliance with the Church of Rome will stop the crusading fervour of the Italian and French troops on its borders, determined to strike through Byzantium to reach Jerusalem. Faced with the prospect of surrendering its gentile Orthodox theology to Roman Catholicism, the city is in turmoil as opposing factions seek to assert their authority. For Anna, the brutal conflict only echoes her own life. Recently arrived in Byzantium to find…
John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium ignited my passion for the Byzantines in the early 2000s. I knew little about them before reading that book; now I rarely read any other topic. I have always loved historical fiction and was dismayed to find so few books about the Byzantines. Once I read about the remarkable life of Anna Dalassena I realized I had found a character to write about and remedy that shortage. I am presently working on my fifth book and third novel, which will be about Anna’s son, Emperor Alexios I Comnenus. I also have a book of short stories and a brief Byzantine history.
Gordon Doherty is a prolific writer of ancient and medieval historical fiction, including this first in a three-book series, Strategos. Strategos was a title for a general in the Byzantine military. This first novel in the series starts the life of Apion, a boy living in Byzantine eastern Anatolia in 1046 as the Seljuk Turks begin their incursions into the empire’s borders. His life is shattered when a Seljuk raid kills the rest of his family, and the boy is taken in by a nearby Seljuk farmer. Apion lives with that farmer and falls in love with his daughter, Maria. A twist of fate leads him away from his home and into the military where he begins his rise in the ranks. The next two books lead our hero inevitably to the betrayals on the battlefield at Manzikert.
When the falcon has flown, the mountain lion will charge from the east, and all Byzantium will quake. Only one man can save the empire . . . the Haga!
1046 AD. The Byzantine Empire teeters on full-blown war with the Seljuk Sultanate. In the borderlands of Eastern Anatolia, a land riven with bloodshed and doubt, young Apion's life is shattered in one swift and brutal Seljuk night raid. Only the benevolence of Mansur, a Seljuk farmer, offers him a second chance of happiness.
Yet a hunger for revenge burns in Apion's soul, and he is drawn down a dark…
I first became interested in Byzantium in high school, when I read Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I’ve been interested in Byzantine subjects ever since. I’ve traveled to almost every country that was once part of the Byzantine Empire, all around the Mediterranean seaboard. I’ve written ten books and many articles on Byzantine politics, Byzantine scholarship, Byzantine literature, the Byzantine economy, the Byzantine army, Byzantine religion, and Byzantine art (with my wife, a Byzantine art historian). It’s such an enormous field, spanning thirteen centuries, three continents, and Greek, Roman, Christian, and many other cultures, that there’s always something new, surprising, and marvelous to discover.
The masterpiece of Byzantium’s greatest historian is a dramatic military narrative by a gifted storyteller who happened to be the private secretary of Byzantium’s greatest general, Belisarius, during the reign of Byzantium’s greatest emperor, Justinian I (527-565). It’s in three parts: The Persian War, in which Belisarius defended Byzantine Syria against the Persians; The Vandal War, in which Belisarius conquered North Africa from the Vandals; and The Gothic War, in which Belisarius conquered most of Italy from the Goths, though the final conquest was the work of another great general, Narses.
If you don’t have time to read the whole saga, I recommend reading The Vandal War, which is self-contained and particularly exciting. Procopius’ Secret History is more famous because it’s so scandalous, but it’s not as great a history as the Wars.
A fully-outfitted edition of Prokopios' late Antique masterpiece of military history and ethnography--for the 21st-century reader. "At last . . . the translation that we have needed for so long: a fresh, lively, readable, and faithful rendering of Prokopios' Wars , which in a single volume will make this fundamental work of late ancient history-writing accessible to a whole new generation of students." --Jonathan Conant, Brown University
Many students are still taught that the Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. To the contrary, the Roman Empire survived and flourished through the Middle Ages up to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Roman state was incredibly long-lived and resilient. Modern historians often call its medieval incarnation the Byzantine Empire. I have devoted my professional life to studying these medieval Romans (or Byzantines) and to telling others about them. I teach courses at my university, write books, consult for documentaries, appear on podcasts, and engage on Twitter. The early Byzantine period was a time of both continuity and immense change and I find it endlessly fascinating.
This work of historical fiction attracted me to the study of the Byzantine Empire.
I read it as a first-year university student and was astonished at its story of intrigue, mutilation, and murder in a medieval, Christian Roman Empire. Fans of medieval fantasy such as George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series might be drawn to this riveting and dramatic tale.
This story of the life of the volcanic and unpredictable emperor Justinian II (r. 685-695 and 705-711 A.D.) welcomed me to the Byzantine world, and perhaps it will do the same for you!
A Hugo Award-winner offers a fictional account of the violent reign of seventh-century Roman Emperor Justinian II, capturing the drama of his youthful rise to the throne, his expansion of Roman rule, and his eventual overthrow. Reprint.
Many students are still taught that the Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. To the contrary, the Roman Empire survived and flourished through the Middle Ages up to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Roman state was incredibly long-lived and resilient. Modern historians often call its medieval incarnation the Byzantine Empire. I have devoted my professional life to studying these medieval Romans (or Byzantines) and to telling others about them. I teach courses at my university, write books, consult for documentaries, appear on podcasts, and engage on Twitter. The early Byzantine period was a time of both continuity and immense change and I find it endlessly fascinating.
After reading Turteltaub’s Justinian, I was determined to discover whether the details of the life of Justinian II which were included in that work of historical fiction were history or fiction.
This book, the first full treatment of the emperor’s life in English by a modern historian, was where I turned. The book is short and engaging and is an excellent example of rehabilitation.
Justinian II received a bad reputation from his contemporaries and successors, and Head shows how they had incentive to portray the emperor in this way and offers a more sympathetic take on his life. This is a classic example of the difficulties modern historians face in trying to evaluate the sources we have for the Byzantine Empire.
This is the first complete book on the Emperor Justinian II, who despite having had one of the most colorful and tempestuous careers of any historical figure, remains largely enigmatic. Ruler of the great Byzantine Empire from 685 to 695, Justinian was deposed by the usurper Leontios, who severed the emperor's nose in a brutal warning to him never again to return to Constantinople. Defeated, disfigured, and alone, Justinian wandered among barbarian tribes beyond the far borders of the Empire. Finally, after 10 years in exile he gathered together an army of Bulgar mercenaries and returned victorious to Constantinople where…
Many students are still taught that the Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. To the contrary, the Roman Empire survived and flourished through the Middle Ages up to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Roman state was incredibly long-lived and resilient. Modern historians often call its medieval incarnation the Byzantine Empire. I have devoted my professional life to studying these medieval Romans (or Byzantines) and to telling others about them. I teach courses at my university, write books, consult for documentaries, appear on podcasts, and engage on Twitter. The early Byzantine period was a time of both continuity and immense change and I find it endlessly fascinating.
After reading about fascinating emperors, cities, and wars, one might begin to ponder larger questions like how the late Roman (early Byzantine) government functioned and what its society was like. This book is a detailed analysis of these issues.
To my mind, it is one of the best history books ever written about the early Byzantine Empire. It can be approached as a reference work, and one can seek out sections that seem interesting such as the conditions of service in the army, the social origins of the clergy, the taxation system, or the powers behind the throne.
The breadth and depth of Jones’ learning is impressive and on full display in this classic.
Like any writer, I’m fascinated with what makes people tick and why they act the way they do. Naturally, this means I read a lot of history. I love reference reading; I love researching arcane questions for a tiny detail that will bring a character or their world to life. Creating epic fantasy is an extension of both my drives as a reader and a writer. Pouring myself into characters who inhabit different settings is a deeply satisfying exercise in both craft and empathy, and each history book has some small bit I can use to make my settings more compelling, more enjoyable for readers, and more real.
I was in love the moment I opened an abridged version of Gibbon’s magnum opus as a young history buff, and was even more delighted when I sought out the multivolume full experience.
Gibbon’s view of the Roman Empire is magisterial and his footnotes are a cranky delight; he’s up-front when his sources have axes to grind and sourly suspicious of his own motivations.
Sure, he’s an 18th-century British colonialist with all that entails. He’s also deliciously ironic, hilariously sardonic, and does his mightiest justice when he’s skewering folly and tyranny of any stripe.
Spanning thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, DECLINE & FALL is one of the greatest narratives in European Literature. David Womersley's masterly selection and bridging commentary enables the readerto acquire a general sense of the progress and argument of the whole work and displays the full variety of Gibbon's achievement.
I first came across Byzantium when I read Robert Graves' Count Belisarius and studied as much of its history as I could while at King's College London. Later I taught English in Turkey and was able to visit the Byzantine sites of Istanbul, Iznik, and Cappadocia. I now teach medieval and Byzantine history at Royal Holloway, University of London. For those living outside eastern Europe and Russia, Byzantium may appear to be rather remote and exotic: that is part of its appeal! But just because it is strange and different does not mean that we should not try to understand it on its own terms. That is what I have tried to do in my books and teaching.
Anna Komnene (1083-c.1148) takes up the story where Michael Psellus left off. Like him, she was writing from inside the court: she was the daughter of Alexios I who reigned from 1081 to 1118. She gives a laudatory account of her father’s reign during which the tide of disaster was turned back and Byzantium began to recover some of the ground that it had lost. Some of the most memorable passages in The Alexiad are those that describe the passage of the First Crusade through Byzantium in 1096-7. Komnene takes a rather ambivalent tone in describing the hordes of bellicose warriors who had arrived from the west.
On the one hand, they were fellow Christians who had come to fight the common enemy, the Muslim Turks. On the other hand, might they not also constitute a threat, since they could be well tempted by the riches of Constantinople? That ambivalence…
Written between 1143 and 1153 by the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, The Alexiad is one of the most popular and revealing primary sources in the vast canon of medieval literature. Princess Anna Komnene, eldest child of the imperial couple, reveals the inner workings of the court, profiles its many extraordinary personages, and offers a firsthand account of immensely significant events such as the First Crusade, as well as its impact on the relationship between eastern and western Christianity. A celebrated triumph of Byzantine letters, this is an unparalleled view of Constantinople and the medieval world.
