Augustus

By the Author of Stoner 

In Augustus, his third great novel, John Williams took on an entirely new challenge, a historical narrative set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire. To tell the story, Williams turned to the epistolary novel, a genre that was new to him, transforming & transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher’s Crossing & the campus novel in Stoner. Augustus is the final triumph of a writer who has come to be recognized around the world as an American master.

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John Williams (1922–1994) was born & raised in northeast Texas. 

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The finest historical novel ever written by an American. — The Washington Post

[In Augustus] John Williams re-creates the Roman Empire from the death of Julius Caesar to the last days of Augustus, the machinations of the court, the Senate, and the people, from the sickly boy to the sickly man who almost dies during expeditions to what would seem to be the ruthless ruler. He uses an epistolary format, & in the end all these voices, like a collage, meld together around the main character .... Read it in conjunction with Robert Graves's more flamboyant I, Claudius & Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. — Harold Augenbraum, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation

A novel of extraordinary range, yet of extraordinary minuteness, that manages never to sacrifice one quality for the other.— Financial Times

Williams has fashioned an always engaging, psychologically convincing work of fiction—a consistent & well-realized portrait — Thomas Lask, The New York Times

Readers of both Stoner & Butcher's Crossing will here encounter an altogether new version of the John Williams they've come to know: Augustus is an epistolary novel set in classical Rome. It's a rare genius who can reinvent himself in his final work & earn high praise for doing so. — The Millions