Master & God 

UK Hardback
Hodder and Stoughton
15 March 2012
ISBN 9781444707328
Trade Paperback (overseas market)
March 2012
ISBN 9781444707335 
UK Paperback
27 September 2012
ISBN 9781444707342
UK e-books
March 2012
ISBN9781444707342
Under negotiation:
flipback version for May or June 2012
UK Audio
Hodders Audiobooks,
March 2012,
read by Jonathan Keeble and Clare Corbett -- See Note Below

 

This version is probably not like any other audiobook! The narrative is divided up (by Lindsey) in a way nobody has tried before; if you are used to conventional audiobooks you should be prepared. There are long passages where one voice tells everything in the usual way. Then conversations between Gaius and Lucilla are a kind of drama. As the book goes on and the main characters come together, the whole story is a dialogue for two voices, just as it is narrated in the printed version. It’s not dramatised formally: all the text is there, but it is something special.

The readers are Jonathan Keeble (known to Radio 4 listeners as Titus in the Falco adaptations) and Clare Corbett.

Plot Summary

Set in the reign of the Emperor Domitian in First Century Rome, Master and God is meticulously researched and narrated with serious ambition. We know Domitian killed flies with his pen - how did a fly view this? Who killed the dancer – and was it illegal? Trajan’s column denigrates the barbarian Decebalus – but what chance Europe could have had a Dacian Empire instead? What snacks should be served at a high-powered committee meeting summoned to discuss shedding the ruler it is charged to protect? When a Chief Vestal Virgin is buried alive for adultery, what are the logistics to ensure there are no riots? What kind advice would a female friend give to a Roman soldier who has committed bigamy by accident while in the throes of alcoholism and impotence, at the same time as he is organising a political death squad under a loathsome regime that threatens her personal friends and her divorced husband?

This novel’s reach stretches from the glories of monumental Rome to a prisoner-of-war camp above the snowline the wrong side of the frontier. Its settings include barracks and bars and quiet domestic rooms, the fabulous Flavian palace on the Palatine, Domitian’s fortress villa at Alba Longa, a villa that may have belonged to the poet Horace. It scoffs equally at the military life and poets. Even the doctor is paranoid.

Gaius Vinius Clodianus is a reluctant Praetorian Guard, with a disastrous marriage history and post-traumatic stress – but he is a hero. Flavia Lucilla has given the imperial ladies a ridiculous hairstyle and makes toupees for the increasingly paranoid emperor - and she is good at her job. A devastating fire in Rome starts their story then a shared apartment brings them together, leading to a lifelong friendship, passion and love.

Together they watch Domitian’s once talented rule unravel into madness and cruelty, until the people closest to the Emperor conspire to delete him from history. As an imperial bodyguard, Gaius then faces an impossible dilemma, where the bloody outcome inevitably threatens his and Lucilla’s hopes of a future together and even their lives.

  Reviews

From the Hodders press release: Under Lindsey Davis’ ever-skilful pen, ancient Rome and her subjects come alive. The brooding and despotic Domitian, the civil and military campaigns he masterminded, his courtiers, politicians and literati, the filth and flies that threatened a supposedly great civilization, even surreal aspects of bureaucracy … all are lifted out of near historical oblivion and given shape, colour and size. Madness, love, humour and the will to survive are the threads running through this engrossing and most entertaining realization of history.