Caesar

Allan Massie's Caesar is a perception of greatness overreaching itself. Through the eyes of one of his comrades, Decimus Brutus, we observe Caesar the enchanter, the showman, the general whose soldiers will follow him anywhere, while their wives supply his bed. We see the man of authority whose charm can be devastating but whose emotional engagement is nil. In his third Roman novel after Tiberius and Augustus , Allan Massie writes with a wry wit about human frailty, while political philosophy has never before been clothed in such an atmosphere of highly charged sexuality. 'Massie's achievement is to infuse the mythical emperor with blood . . . he invigorates his characters with voices that seem to echo the present, not the past, and which are utterly convincing . . . a piece of bravura invention' Independent