Augustus

Weir’s sympathetic and detailed biography reassesses the life of a woman whose role in public life…has been underrated by historians * New Statesman *
The finest historical novel ever written by an American * Washington Post *
It would be easy to over-praise this novel; but there does not seem any adequate reason why this temptation should be resisted * Economist *
A novel of extraordinary range, yet of extraordinary minuteness, that manages never to sacrifice one quality for the other * Financial Times *
Williams has fashioned an always engaging, psychologically convincing work of fiction - a consistent and well-realized portrait * New Yorker *
A highly imaginative account of the life and times of Augustus-a brilliant novel * Library Journal *
A brilliant epistolary novel about Octavius Caesar and ancient Rome...all three [of John Williams'] novels show a similar narrative arc: a young man's initiation, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men and women, fathers and daughters, and finally a bleak sense of disappointment, even futility. * New York Times *
Exquisite...brims with great lines * Chicago Tribune *
A vividly imagined re-creation of classical Rome, but its intuitive grasp of the experience of immense power makes it an unusual, and superior, novel * Boston Globe *
There could be no better year than 2014 to rediscover this one -- Mary Beard * Times Literary Supplement *