PenguinReaders' Group
 

Editors' Choice

By Juliet Annan, Publishing Director, Fig Tree

Counting the Stars

Counting the Stars by Helen Dunmore

This is Helen Dunmore doing what she always does so well, taking the reader into a strange unfamiliar world, in this case completely drowning the reader in the smells and the streets of a rich, surging, teaming, corrupt city -- ancient Rome at the time of Catullus.

Counting the Stars is his story, the tale of his passion for the muse of his Lesbia poems, in real life the seductive and dangerous noblewoman Clodia, and the novel recounts their real life love affair as it might have been. Helen Dunmore brings Rome and her people brilliantly to life as we watch a society full of political violence, corruption and even murder, while Catullus' jealousy grows in the poisonous atmosphere...

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