Having read ENIGMA, Robert Harris’ book about the World War II code machine, and FATHERLAND, his alternate-history tale pondering if Germany won WWII, I knew what I could expect from his latest, IMPERIUM: some great fiction set in historical Rome.
Expect he lost me pretty quick in this one. Setting a book in ancient Rome is a tricky matter; with most names ending in “us,” you would need a scorecard to keep track of who’s who. That’s not the kind of book I can recommend to the BOOKGASM crowd.
The basic story is told from the point of view of Cicero’s private secretary, Tiro, the inventor of shorthand. Tiro spills the details of Cicero’s life, particularly his rise in the Roman goverment, meeting various other Roman historical figures along the way. Harris sets it up so that Tiro is close to 100 when writing this down, so for a man that old, he has a pretty sharp memory.
I guess if you are tired of reading the classics of Roman liteature that you read in college, this may hold some appeal, being a different take on the same type of story. But I was expecting something a little more different from Harris instead of the dull minutiae of Roman life. –Bruce Grossman
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