10 books like Procopius

Murasaki Shikibu was a lady of the Heian Court of Japan in the eleventh century and has been credited with creating the first novel ever written.

The Tale of Genji has stood the test of centuries. It reveals a world of political machinations, danger, passionate intrigue, and forbidden love in an exotic setting of a time long forgotten. Genji is the son of an emperor and, once you read him, you will understand why his tale is still so popular today.

Why not start with the oldest surviving long-form narrative there is. While purporting to account for the late reign of the very real King of the very real Sumerian city-state Uruk, the epic of Gilgamesh—very like the epics that the Greeks would offer some 4 to 14 hundred years later—trots out a world replete with the goddesses, monsters, magical drums, forests, and sacred undersea plants. The flavor of this world is first and most memorably signaled by the deliberate creation of a rival for its protagonist. Sculpted from river clay, then sexually domesticated by a temple maiden, the wild man Enkidu fights his way into a lifelong bromance with Gilgamesh that eventually confronts each with his own mortality. Again, for being the oldest such tale we know of, and for having to be chiseled on tablets, the whole thing holds up as a very living document, wildly entertaining, psychologically… show more.

The Bible, by committee. Well, sure. Provided we can leave to others—or maybe just to each individual reader—the problem of deciding which parts are the history, which the myth, and which seem to be, let’s just say, imaginatively conceived (and which of these can claim the firmest purchase on the Truth we should probably also leave to the reader), the Good Book remains the deconstructed prototype for the kind of literary braid we’re talking about, the all-time album of mirrors, fashioned from pretty much all the same genres we still write in—poetry, philosophy, allegory, parable, vignette, epistolary, horror, and IKEA instruction manual.

Regarding the blend of the natural and supernatural, the moment I’ve been looking at with students recently—this for a class I’ve offered on the subject of mental health and literature—is the meeting of Jesus and the Gerasene Demoniac,… show more.

Another story we discuss in my mental health and literature class, and easily found in any collection of Dostoevsky, The Dream of the Ridiculous Man recounts one desperate and momentous night in the life of the titular depressive and proto-absurdist. His experience revolves around a faith-restoring dream in which (spoiler alert) the narrator shoots himself, is buried alive, pulled from the grave by a black angel, then flown through outer space to an alternate sun with an alternate earth where the local population is enjoying a shamelessly Edinic existence—that is, until the narrator contaminates them with his ego, causing them all to fall from grace, the description of which provides Dostoevsky the opportunity to recap the whole of human history in roughly three pages. Accurately no less. It’s a bravura performance.

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.

Byzantine history has only sporadically inspired historical fiction, although Empress Theodora, wife of Emperor Justinian, has had more than a few novels written about her. I’ve read and enjoyed many of them but this book is one of the best. Her dramatic life encompassed the deadly Nike riots, the building of the magnificent Hagia Sophia, and the Justinianic Plague. And did I mention that she was a courtesan prior to marrying Justinian? Martin’s Theodora is a glorious and sympathetic woman, even if flawed. The author tells her story wonderfully through the eyes of a court eunuch!

Published 1893, Laing considers all kinds of searching questions relating to astronomy, geology, spiritualism, poetry, taxation, finance, and much more. Clearly a possessor of a powerful intelligence, Laing endeavors to make sense of the universe and human life with the limited information he had at his disposal, compared to what we know today. How does the sun burn, he asks? Is it made from coal? A notion he dismisses with rational precision. Later, he considers the arms race from his nineteenth century viewpoint and uncannily predicts a “Great War” that will engulf most of Europe, with “Constantinople” being the likely catalyst of “the blood-rain deluges of the greatest war the world has ever seen”.

This book vividly describes what happened when the fears of Anna Komnene and other Byzantines were finally realised and a crusading expedition ended up attacking and capturing Constantinople. Phillips’ interest is in crusading rather than in Byzantium so the focus of the book is on the actions and motivations of the crusaders. He points out that they had no plan originally to go to Constantinople: their aim was to sail to Egypt from where they would recover Jerusalem for Christendom. Only when they ran short of supplies and money did they accept the invitation of a Byzantine prince to divert to Constantinople and help him to restore his father to the throne. And they only attacked the city when the prince failed to pay them what he had promised! Nevertheless, by their actions they brought about the ruin not just of a state but of an entire culture.

A book about books.

Who hasn’t imagined the books they read coming to life in their living room or being able to dive into the fictional world? A father and daughter have a magical ability to do just that.

Unfortunately, the villain of one story was released and this sets them off on an adventure typically only available in books.

Meggie and Mo are an endearing father/daughter team while they navigate the consequences and reaches of their magic.

Oh, this one? It is everything. The villain is a virgin! Which deep down we all want. Seraphena is promised to him since childhood, groomed into marrying him and killing him in order to save her country. When the wedding night comes – he rejects her, leaving her behind. People blame her. If she hated him before, she loathes him even more. Until he reappears into her life to save her and they both fight this attraction. She still has a mission, and this is her excuse to try to seduce him. He is a tough nut to crack. He is actually more in control of himself than she is. As she grows to know him in his supernatural surroundings, hatred is hard to keep and so is distance…