Many readers have recommended Michael Shaara's Pulitzer-Prize-winning "The Killer Angels" as a novel that superbly translates a historical event into fiction.

WSJ: Dear Book Lover: Fiction that Reads Like Nonfiction

These historic events form the background to this short, arresting historical novel, written almost as a prose poem, which recounts the Dome's construction from the viewpoint of one of the Caliph's advisers, who is of Jewish origin but has adopted the new Muslim creed.

ECONOMIST: New fiction from the Middle East