Robert Harris

A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 in _The New York Times_, BBC Culture, the _Mirror_ and _Radio Times.__From the bestselling author of Conclave comes a new compelling book exploring friendship and power against the backdrop of ancient Rome._Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice.

His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television.

He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby._Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever.

One is Caesar's 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has made his heir.__The other is Octavius's closest friend, Agrippa.__To claim Octavius's inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire - and, against all odds, they win.

Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus.

For twenty years, they rule the world together.__Now Agrippa is fifty.

Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife's infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs.

Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous.

From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.__When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?_