What every child can learn about the Crusades

I'm reading Pilgermann by Russell Hoban . It's been at home for years and I must have orginally bought it for the cover which is significant to the plot and really similar in all the editions.*

For want of better words, it's a psychedelic or surreal journey. The narrator, Pilgerman, was a Jew in central Europe when the first crusade starts up but he tells the story from the point of view of someone moving at will through space and time. He regularly cites paintings by Hieronymous Bosch and Vemeer. He's visited by dead people, including Jesus (being Jewish, Pilgermann asks to speak to His Father and is told he'll be dealing with the Son from now on, boom boom). In places it's laugh out loud funny. In many spots it's really gruesome (maggot ridden corpses, rape, cannibalism) but these were and are gruesome times.

The book's about the violence caused by the different faiths. Christians kill Jews and Turks. Turks kill Jews and Christians. Jews try to survive (so far anyway). Implicit is the image of the Holocaust.

What is beautiful is the discussion of the different beliefs of the three religions and the creation of an infinite pattern that moves through the universe.

In places it's reminding me of this fantasy novel I read years and years called
The Wandering Unicorn** by Manuel Mujica Lainez. This is a strange and beautiful story about a fairy in love with a Frenchman who goes crusading and meets violence, treachery, disease and death on the way.

What these books both show is that logically, the Crusades were a completely bizarre waste of resources and effort. But then, logic wasn't the point.

*My cover is prettier than this but I can't work out how to get my camera to talk to my computer and make files that don't take ages to upload.

** THis links to the same edition I have. That never happens