Product Description

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. The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes - are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, a slave who serves as confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master's secrets - a dangerous position to be in. From the discovery of a child's mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, "Lustrum" is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The rise of Robert Harris as one of the UK's premier novelists has been something of a phenomenon. His breakthrough book was, of course, Fatherland, and even though the premise (Germany had won the Second World War and occupied Britain) was not original, the treatment was astonishingly assured. From that date onwards, a series of remarkable books flowed from his metaphorical pen: Archangel, Enigma and the much-acclaimed Ghost. But if one element has distinguished Harris’s career, it is his wholly admirable refusal to be typecast with regard to genre. The thriller may be his natural home, but he has shown an immense skill at dealing with historical subjects and the past: one of his most impressive novels was the massive and ambitious Pompeii (recently on the point of being filmed by Roman Polanski before his own past came back to haunt him).

And here's Lustrum, another historical novel that cannily utilises elements of the thriller but attempts something far more challenging than most proponents of that genre. Harris’s continuing theme is the battle for power, and this Rome-set narrative deals with the years around 63BC when Cicero was Consul of Rome, building to the unstoppable accession to power of the canny and ruthless Caesar. Rome, in the process of consolidating its massive empire, resounds to the sounds of a no-holds-barred struggle for influence. The protagonists here are the canny consul Cicero, the equally Machiavellian Caesar, the Republic's eminent general Pompey and the hyper-rich Crassus. These real historical figures (and others, including the psychopathic Catilina) are stirred into a very heady brew by Robert Harris, beginning when the body of a child, grotesquely mutilated, is discovered. The trial and execution that follows plunges the city of Rome into a ferment as destabilising as anything it has faced.

This is Robert Harris at his considerable best, evoking the ancient past with a vividness that few of his contemporaries can muster. But apart from the richly detailed historical pageant on offer in Lustrum, the real coup of the book lies in the creation of the character of Cicero: wonderfully realised, with all the contradictions and charm of his nature acting as the perfect fulcrum for this sprawling but utterly persuasive narrative. --Barry Forshaw

Review
`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' --Allan Massie, STANDPOINT

`Wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character.' --Observer

`A fascinating world, a world of subtle political machinations and fine oratory and nuanced debate, and complex legislation, and intrigue ... Extremely absorbing' --Christina Patterson, Independent

`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' --Tom Holland, Spectator

`Offers great insight into the psychology of political calculation' --Independent

`Deeply satisfying, impeccably researched and spectacularly topical ... This is a thriller to die for ... The pace never falters, and the politics are sharply relevant' --Wendy Holden, Daily Mail

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

Dark deeds and infighting
Make no mistake, this book is about politics. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's Rome in 60BC - this novel could easily be set in Westminster or Washington, present day. In other words, politics and politicians don't change. They conspire, they lie, they seek alliances with enemies merely to further their own ambitions. And in the end, they're either found out or destroyed. Harris' novel 'The Ghost' has a very thinly-veiled Tony Blair and I don't think the present shenanigans can have been far from Harris' mind even when writing about Cicero. Take this from early on : "Now we have occupied Syria. What business do we have in Syria? This is going to require permanent legions stationed overseas." Sound familiar? Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the book very much. I thought at first it didn't have the sheer lust for power evident in 'Imperium' but once you start to see Julius Caesar's plotting, you realise this isn't the case. At the end, I found myself wondering how I felt about Cicero. Did I feel sorry for him or was he the victim of his own machinations? You can decide for yourself. Excellent cover, I thought - the hounds and the deer. Highly recommended but I'm not sure it's going to be to everyone's taste.

Expiation (Lustrum) after Power (Imperium)
Lustrum is the deserving sequel to Harris's Imperium - though it is also readable on its own. It picks up where the first book of the trilogy-in-progress left off: Cicero has just been elected consul. The year 63BC begins. Cicero is faced with the same hostility from corrupt senatorial peers, oblivious to threats from the immensely wealthy Crassus and the rising stars of popular Rome that are Caesar and Pompey. But Cicero also makes mistakes. He turns down a land law amid rural distress, debt, and a grain shortage. The demagogues soon seize upon this to launch the murkiest and most desperate conspiracy the Republic has seen. This is led by none other than Catiline, the debauched patrician playboy whom Cicero had to defeat at the consular stakes. And Catiline has friends, he is unafraid of violence, and is bent on vengeance.

Cicero's life was eventful in itself, but it also took place within the most tumultuous of Roman times. And Cicero's own writings were profuse. So Harris's trilogy can afford to rely on, at times becoming almost a palimpsest of, the original documents, and the Imperium series are that rare thing: a historically faithful work that is at the same time a great yarn. Though I'd read and enjoyed some Harris before, I heard of the Ciceronian trilogy through an eminent professor of classics. She said she found no historical mistake in it, and that it captures the spirit of the times as she imagines it. This is isn't to belittle Harris as a storyteller. He knows when to build anticipation and what to insist on for drama. The idea was brilliant of having the story told by Tiro, Cicero's slave secretary, who actually existed and wrote a lost biography of his master. If anything, Lustrum offers more action and tension than Imperium. It is also darker, beginning with the murder of a child, and more lurid, answering our fantasies of Roman decadence.

Lustrum became the term for the five-year period between each taking of the census, when the censors purged the morally unfit from the body politic, especially from the senate. As the late Republic's conflicts became increasingly acrimonious, one after the other of the censuses failed to be performed - and Cicero became ever more anxious at what he saw as a double tale of moral and constitutional decay. We will eagerly be awaiting the final episode of Harris's trilogy: into the Civil War.

Quousque tandem?
Magnificent historical recollection of tragic times through the life of a protagonist, the staunch defensor of the Roman Republic Marcus Tullius Cicero.I like how the Catiline Conspiracy is narrated as if it were a modern polytical thriller,yet making us feel immersed in those ancient times quite convincingly,making us appreciate the tragic moral dilemmas Cicero had to face, amidst ambiguous friends,unrelenting foes,and powerful men as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. A great novel to rival Steven Saylor's "Catilina's Riddle" in Roma sub Rosa series!