Agrippa by Robert Harris

Agrippa is Robert Harris's new novel, and a return to the Ancient Rome of his Cicero books. Harris also wrote Conclave, now an Oscar-winning film.

Julius Caesar is dead. His seventeen-year-old great-nephew Octavius has been named his heir, and with his closest friend, Marcus Agrippa, he sets out to claim it against the biggest names in Rome. Somehow they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus, and for twenty years the two of them rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty, unwell and alone, betrayed in his marriage, writing his memoirs at his house on the Bay of Naples. He looks back over all of it: Caesar, the war with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the sea battle at Actium, and the one man who shaped his whole life, the cool and unknowable Octavius. The question underneath is whether real friendship can survive that much power.

Historical fiction for readers of Harris's own Imperium and of Conn Iggulden. This edition is the trade paperback.

'A persuasive portrait of rivalry in ancient Rome. Bloodshed, betrayal and hectic jockeying for power.' Sam Leith, The Guardian