Lustrum - Robert Harris

After "Imperium" this is the second part of an intended trilogy about Cicero, the famous roman orator. Lustrum is a latin word meaning a period of five years, and five years in the life of Cicero is what this novel is about. It begins with the Catilina affair (quosque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?) and follows on with the struggle of Cicero and the patrician party against populists and the emerging figure of Julius Caesar. The narrator is (in the fiction) Tiro, who was indeed the secretary of Cicero. A lot of books have been written about those times and for a change here we've got a different point of view. The main character, Cicero, appears to be well intentioned but only human. He was not a soldier, but a lawyer and we're told that he couldn't stand blood.