ROBERT HARRIS is the author of nine best-selling novels: Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium, The Ghost Writer, Conspirata, The Fear Index, and An Officer and a Spy. Several of his books have been adapted to film, most recently The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He lives in the village of Kintbury, England, with his wife, Gill Hornby.
Praise for Robert Harris’s Dictator
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Guardian * The Sunday Times (London) * The Mail on
Sunday
The Spectator * BBC History Magazine * Metro * The
Herald (Glasgow)
“[Harris] is incapable of writing an unenjoyable book. . . . He
captures . . . triumviral intrigue magnificently, not relenting as
the players meet their gruesome ends.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Harris brings Cicero to life with wit, verve, and vanity. . . .
This is storytelling at its finest—and not to be missed.” —The
Christian Science Monitor
“It is the measure of Harris’s achievement that we experience a
2,000-year-old crisis as though we were reading about it in a
contemporary memoir.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Splendid. . . . A three-dimensional, historically specific, often
witty work of empathy and imagination.” —Chicago Tribune
“Thrilling. . . . Harris remains impressively faithful to the
ancient sources, embellishing the gaps with terse dialogue,
exhilarating exchanges and witty observations. . . . His novel
often feels like the best kind of narrative history, at once
frenetic but measured in its assessment of the characters who
brought the Republic to an end.” —New Statesman
“Cicero’s was a life rich in gravitas and drama, and Harris depicts
it with erudition and élan. . . . Harris seems to have mastered
every telling aspect of the world and the conflicts he dramatizes.”
—The Washington Post
“A sensational political thriller. . . . [Harris] has a
pitch-perfect ear for class snobbery, hypocrisy, parliamentary
posturing, and bluster. His best episodes bring crucial
behind-the-scenes moments in Roman political skullduggery to
colourful life. . . . I could not put it down.” —Edith Hall, The
Guardian
“Masterly. . . . Harris’s version of the events preceding Caesar’s
assassination is persuasively realized, and he renders the
terrifying uncertainty of its aftermath with such skill that the
ensuing betrayal and destruction of the Roman Republic can almost
draw a tear. . . . Deeply satisfying.” —The Telegraph (London)
“Harris gives ancient history the feel of an ongoing thriller, a
true-life game of thrones. But for all the pyrotechnics, his depth
and fidelity put him in league with Marguerite Yourcenar.” —New
York Magazine
“Superb. . . . Informed by Harris’s wide reading of classical texts
and his intimate knowledge of current intrigue, the novel proves
that when it comes to ruthless politics, there’s nothing new under
the sun. It confirms Harris’s undisputed place as our leading
master of both the historical and contemporary thriller.” —The
Daily Mail
“Charming as well as engrossing. . . . Harris has written smart,
gripping thrillers . . . but his Cicero novels are more akin to
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall in their subjects—men of towering
intellect and humanity—and in their visceral evocation of history.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The real triumph of Dictator is how successfully it channels what
is perhaps the supreme fascination of ancient Rome: the degree to
which it is at once eerily like our own world and yet profoundly
alien.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[Dictator] is as skillful as it is sobering. . . . Its gripping
dramas and powerful themes—the fragility of democracy and the
fallibility of human beings among them—richly illuminate the
conflicts of its era and our own.” —Publishers Weekly
“Brilliant and gripping. . . . With Dictator Robert Harris brings
his Cicero trilogy to a triumphant, compelling, and deeply moving
conclusion. The three novels are surely the finest fictional
treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language. They are
distinguished by mastery of the sources, sympathetic imagination,
political intelligence, and narrative skill.” —The Scotsman
“The most strident historian will admire Harris’s masterful
storytelling and his vivid re-creation of this critical period in
the development of Western Civilization. . . . But even if you have
never given ancient Rome a second thought since escaping that
confounding Latin class decades ago, you will find yourself right
at home, jumping in on the final chapter of the life of this giant
of a man and the final decade of his beloved republic.” —The
Buffalo News
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