I am excited to share with you all the chance to win a paperback copy of Margaret George's incredible book The Confessions of Young Nero! I reviewed this book on the blog last year when it came out and because of that Berkley Publishing was kind enough to offer me the opportunity to give away one copy of the new paperback edition. Find out more about the book below as well as how to enter!
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
Paperback, 544 pages
Berkley Publishing
Release Date: March 20th, 2018
ISBN: 97804514733394
Buy: Amazon | Book Depository
"New York Times bestselling author Margaret George has brought history to vivid life with her critically-acclaimed biographical novels of historical figures including Helen of Troy, Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots, and Henry VIII. Now, she casts her eye to the last member of Julius Caesar’s dynasty, to remold and humanize the boy of whom history has made a caricature. Emperor Nero, who ascended to Rome’s ultimate seat of power at sixteen, is enshrined in popular memory as a hedonist, a tyrant, and cunning executioner. But the truth behind the caricature reveals a boy, an artist, an athlete, and a ruler who was both a product of his time and his mother Agrippina’s relentless ambition.
THE CONFESSIONS OF YOUNG NERO (Berkley Paperback Reprint; March 20, 2018; $18) is written, like Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, in the form of an autobiography. It reveals with luminescent detail Nero’s complex talents and successes, his childhood, his rise to power, and his instinct for self-preservation which first took root on the moonlit night his insane uncle, the Emperor Caligula, tried to drown him.
Nero’s life—riddled with murders, rivalries, plots, orgies, and incest—is sensational on its own. But for George, THE CONFESSIONS OFYOUNG NERO is not just an opportunity to tell his story. It is an attempt to rehabilitate his image, and to expose the truth and complexities about both a man—and a time period—that has been much mythologized. George spent five years researching the novel, but her idea of resettingNero’s villainous reputation has been building for more than thirty.
When he is just a small child, Nero’s mother, Agrippina, is released from exile by her elderly uncle—the newly crowned Emperor Claudius. Agrippina quickly plucks Nero from his modest upbringing, and embarks on a ruthless pruning of the family tree to ensure what she believes is her son’s rightful place in the Palace. Her naked ambition, cunning, and well-placed doses of poison help the obstacles fall one by one, until a teenage boy is given control of an Empire. Both tempted and terrified to assume his reign, Nero’s indoctrination into the incest, violence, luxury, and intrigue that have gripped Rome’s seat of power for generations will shape him into the man he was fated to become.
George covers the unfolding of Nero’s life and legacy, including his forced marriage to his cousin Octavia at fifteen; his passion for a beautiful ex-slave and other love affairs; the influence of the great philosopher Seneca on his reign; and his attentiveness to his political duties, including the improvement of Rome’s courts and public amenities. George uses Nero’s expansion of theatres, athletic games, chariot races, and musical performances as a window into the powerful artistic and athletic impulses that governed him, and which made him a champion of the common man—the men among whom he’d begun his life as “Lucius,” until fate made him forever “Nero.”
Like Mary Beard’s revisionist history of ancient Rome, SPQR, NERO both challenges our assumptions of that time period and taps into readers’ fascination with the Empire. Readers of Philippa Gregory will adore and find much to discover in George’s latest novel.
The author will continue Nero’s story in a second book this fall, THE SPLENDOR BEFORE THE DARK, which picks up during the ill-fated, final four years of his young life, as he faces his biggest test and challenge: the Great Fire of Rome."
About the author:
Margaret George is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels of biographical historical fiction, including Elizabeth I, Helen of Troy, Mary, Called Magdalene, The Memoirs of Cleopatra, The Autobiography of Henry VIII, and Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles. She also has written a children’s book, Lucille Lost.
You can find out more about Margaret George and her work at her website: margaretgeorge.com
Giveaway:
**This is a US only giveaway, per Berkley Publishing's request.
Winners will be contacted via email and will have 48 hours to respond with their complete mailing address. This mailing address will be forwarded to Berkley Publishing, who will be sending you the book; your address will not be used for any other purposes.
If you do not respond within 48 hours, I will have to select another winner.
Good luck!
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I've seen Margaret George's books around for years; they always seem so well-researched.
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