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 *

John Williams was an author, editor and professor. Born in 1922 in Texas, he served in the United States Army Air Force from 1942 to 1945 in China, Burma and India. His first novel, Nothing But the Night, was published in 1948. After receiving his PhD in 1954, Williams returned to the University of Denver where he first studied to teach literature and creative writing for thirty years. It was during this time that he wrote the novels Butcher’s Crossing (1960) and Stoner (1965). His last novel, Augustus, won the National Book Award in 1973. John Williams died in Arkansas in 1994.

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