The Ruby in Her Navel is a historical novel by Barry Unsworth first published in 2006.

The book is narrated by Thurstan Beauchamp, a young man of English-Norman origins and describes Sicilian life through his eyes.

Writing in the Guardian, John Julius Norwich said that the novel made him feel what it felt like to live, work and travel in the Sicily of that time.

[1] Jason Goodwin in The New York Times Book Review points to the contemporary resonance of the story, set as it is in the brief time that Normans, Byzantines, Greeks, Muslims, and Jews lived together in relative harmony.

The harmony did not work, says Goodwin and "we glimpse the fragile nature of the Sicilian compact — and the gloomy inevitability of the civil conflict that lies ahead".