Lustrum

It was Rome, 63 BC. In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power - Cicero is consul; Caesar, his ruthless young rival; Pompey, the republic's greatest general; Crassus, its richest man; Cato, a political fanatic; Catilina, a psychopath; and, Clodius, an ambitious playboy.

Harris is the master. With Lustrum , [he] has surpassed himself. It is one of the most exciting thrillers I have ever read

Harris communicates such a strong sense of imperial Rome - the book is awesomely well-informed about the minutiae of everyday life

Thoroughly engaging ... The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller

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

Magnificent ... Better than Robert Graves's Claudius novels

A read to be savoured

Wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character.

Thrillingly paced and narrated ... What grips most about Lustrum is the seriousness with which the political issues at stake are taken, and the vividness of the characterisation

Offers great insight into the psychology of political calculation

Deeply satisfying, impeccably researched and spectacularly topical ... This is a thriller to die for ... The pace never falters, and the politics are sharply relevant

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium , Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland , Enigma , Archangel , Pompeii , The Ghost , The Fear Index , An Officer and a Spy , which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave , Munich , The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice . His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.