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<p>[QUOTE="DonnaML, post: 4906797, member: 110350"]Some additional thoughts:</p><p><br /></p><p>I agree with all the recommendations of Gore Vidal's <i>Julian</i>; I simply forgot to mention it in my previous posts. I've never been able to get into any of Vidal's (very lengthy!) novels about American history, but I thought this was a wonderful book.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the "literary" category, I also highly recommend the novel <i>Augustus</i>, by the novelist and poet John Williams; it won the National Book Award in 1973. It's written as an epistolary novel, which is not a form I usually enjoy, but it worked in this case. Try to get the NYRB (New York Review of Books) Classics paperback edition published in 2014, with an interesting introduction by the author Daniel Mendelsohn.</p><p><br /></p><p>Two novels I enjoyed that I think might have been classified as young adult fiction (unless it was just a "No Sex Please, We're British!" kind of thing), but don't let that deter you: Gillian Bradshaw's <i>Island of Ghosts </i>from 1998 (about a troop of Sarmatian horsemen sent to Roman Britain under Marcus Aurelius), and <i>Dark North </i>from 2007 (about an African scout serving with a cavalry unit in Roman Britain under Septimius Severus). Both are very good, but if I had to recommend one of them, it would be the first one. Bradshaw has written quite a few other historical novels that I haven't read, including more than one set in the Byzantine Empire -- an unusual setting for fiction set in the ancient world, for whatever reason. (Not counting books about Vikings set partly in Constantinople, with the Varangian guard, etc.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="DonnaML, post: 4906797, member: 110350"]Some additional thoughts: I agree with all the recommendations of Gore Vidal's [I]Julian[/I]; I simply forgot to mention it in my previous posts. I've never been able to get into any of Vidal's (very lengthy!) novels about American history, but I thought this was a wonderful book. In the "literary" category, I also highly recommend the novel [I]Augustus[/I], by the novelist and poet John Williams; it won the National Book Award in 1973. It's written as an epistolary novel, which is not a form I usually enjoy, but it worked in this case. Try to get the NYRB (New York Review of Books) Classics paperback edition published in 2014, with an interesting introduction by the author Daniel Mendelsohn. Two novels I enjoyed that I think might have been classified as young adult fiction (unless it was just a "No Sex Please, We're British!" kind of thing), but don't let that deter you: Gillian Bradshaw's [I]Island of Ghosts [/I]from 1998 (about a troop of Sarmatian horsemen sent to Roman Britain under Marcus Aurelius), and [I]Dark North [/I]from 2007 (about an African scout serving with a cavalry unit in Roman Britain under Septimius Severus). Both are very good, but if I had to recommend one of them, it would be the first one. Bradshaw has written quite a few other historical novels that I haven't read, including more than one set in the Byzantine Empire -- an unusual setting for fiction set in the ancient world, for whatever reason. (Not counting books about Vikings set partly in Constantinople, with the Varangian guard, etc.)[/QUOTE]
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