Though he briefly became emperor, Claudius, the limping, stuttering grandson of Caesar Augustus, is not your usual Roman on a pedestal. Sly, even bitchy, an appalled observer of his treacherous times — in his voice you hear the worldliness of classical literature with none of its marble officialdom. A member of a ruthless and murderous imperial family, he survives because he seems to all around him the least consequential twig of the family tree. But Claudius bears enduring witness to a moment when the virtues of the Roman republic, which has already been disposed of by the time he begins his tale, are being lost to the bloodlusts and hubris of the Roman empire.
All-TIME 100 Novels
Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME.
I, Claudius
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- The Adventures of Augie March
- All the King’s Men
- American Pastoral
- An American Tragedy
- Animal Farm
- Appointment in Samarra
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
- The Assistant
- At Swim-Two-Birds
- Atonement
- Beloved
- The Berlin Stories
- The Big Sleep
- The Blind Assassin
- Blood Meridian
- Brideshead Revisited
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
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