James Tait Black Memorial Prizes
Modern Classics I Claudius (Penguin Modern Classics)
A historical novel told as the autobiography of the frail, stammering Claudius, who survives the intrigues and assassinations of the Roman imperial court and is eventually thrust onto the throne. It renders the politics of ancient Rome with vivid immediacy from an insider’s point of view.
Work Information
A man dismissed as weak survives at the center of imperial Rome and becomes its witness.
Drawing on Tacitus, Suetonius, and other classical sources, Robert Graves reconstructs the early Roman Empire as Claudius’s own memoir. Court intrigue, family power struggles, and sheer survival intersect as the man dismissed as a fool becomes the witness to history.
Review Summaries
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Readers praise the novel’s driving first-person voice and the way it turns Roman political intrigue into a vivid narrative. Its historical depth and readability are often cited as the reason it endures as a classic.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Penguin Classic
- Published
- 2006-08-29
- Pages
- 400 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13 x 2.4 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780141188591
- ISBN-10
- 0141188596
- Price
- 3023 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
Bringing to life the subterfuge and double-dealing of Roman nobility, Robert Graves's I, Claudius brings the ancient world to life with startling clarity and meticulous realism. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is a includes an introduction by Barry Unsworth. Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius' autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Graves's brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome, and stands as one of the most celebrated, gripping historical novels ever written. If you enjoyed I, Claudius, you might like Graves's sequel Claudius the God, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'An imaginative and hugely readable account of the early decades of the Roman Empire ... racy, inventive, often comic' Daily Telegraph 'Still an acknowledged masterpiece and a model for historical fiction ... sympathetic and intensely involving: a great feat of imagination' Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon. He went from school to the First World War, where he became a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme. He wrote his autobiography, Goodbye to All That, in 1929, and it was soon established as a modern classic. He died on 7 December 1985 in Majorca, his home since 1929.
Reviews
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buono
buono
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Väl värd att läsa
Underhållande och bra skriven fiktiv historia om en historisk person
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Gran libro
Lo compré usado en estado "Bueno", decía Amazon, y la verdad es que estaba en excelente estado. El libro en sí es muy bueno, muy interesante y para ser una novela clásica no es una lectura pesada. Eso sí, si lo compran en inglés, tengan en cuenta que se requiere tener un muy alto nivel del idioma, siendo bilingüe aún preciso buscar 2 palabras por cada página en el diccionario o el traductor
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Baskı kalitesi kötü
Yazıları çok kalın, sanki sahte kitap gibi ama değil. Hızlı üretimin bir eksisi. Okurken göz yoruyor. Her baskı böyle değildir bence, yine de dikkatli olun.
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Lo lei y ahora es un regalo.
Es un magnifico libro para quien le guste ha historia novelada.