Lustrum: (Cicero Trilogy 2)

Description

The second audiobook in the stunning trilogy about the Roman Empire by Robert Harris, author of the acclaimed bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium and The Ghost. The year is 63 BC. In an age of political titans, Cicero stands supreme- the senior consul of the Roman republic. But jealous rivals are determined to destroy him and seize control of the state. To thwart them will take all his guile - and will lead him, and Rome, to the brink of destruction. Robert Harris's Lustrum is a page-turning thriller that pitches the reader into the power struggles and vicious factionalism of the Roman Republic at one of its most tumultuous moments, as Cicero is alerted to a plot to overthrow the government and take over the state. The conspiracy is led by the aristocratic politician Catalina, backed by other, shadowy factions; even Julius Caesar is implicated. Undeterred, Cicero devotes himself to exposing the treachery, and after a bloody struggle emerges triumphant. But the gods are pitiless - and the most talented men over-reach themselves. When the sexually voracious senator and nobleman Clodius is put on trial, accused of entering a sacred women-only religious ritual

Robert Harris is the author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium and The Ghost, all of which were international bestsellers. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. After graduating with a degree in English from Cambridge University, he worked as a reporter for the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight programmes, before becoming political editor of the Observer and subsequently a columnist on the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. He is married to Gill Hornby and they live with their four children in a village near Hungerford.

Harris is the master. With Lustrum, [he] has surpassed himself. It is one of the most exciting thrillers I have ever read * Evening Standard * Harris communicates such a strong sense of imperial Rome - the book is awesomely well-informed about the minutiae of everyday life * Guardian * Thoroughly engaging ... The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller * Sunday Times * Harris never makes his comparisons between Rome and modern Britain explicit, but they are certainly there. And that's the principal charm of his ancient thrillers - their up-to-dateness * Sunday Telegraph * Magnificent ... Better than Robert Graves's Claudius novels * Standpoint *