Eaters of the Dead

Internationally renowned for his riveting, stunningly original bestsellers JURASSIC PARK and RISING SUN, Michael Crichton has crafted, in EATERS OF THE DEAD, the strangest and most fascinating story of his career. In the year 922 AD, the refined Arab courtier Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, representative of the powerful Caliph of Bagdad, accompanies a party of Viking warriors on their journey to the barbaric north. Ibn Fadlan is appalled by Viking customs--the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness, their cold-blooded human sacrifices. But only in the depths of Northland does he learn the horrifying truth: that he has been enlisted to combat a terror that comes under cover of night to slaughter the Vikings and devour their flesh. Based on the fragments of an actual 10th-century Arabic manuscript, EATERS OF THE DEAD combines the thrill of a voyage into the unknown with the shocking revelations of a truth far stranger than fiction. --back cover