Julian cover art

Julian

A Novel

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Julian

By: Gore Vidal
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner, George Newbern, David de Vries, Jeff Cummings
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About this listen

The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.

©1962, 1964 copyright renewed 1990, 1992 by Gore Vidal. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Political Ancient History

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A classic from 1964: great reading, great voices, very interesting novel. Every day an hour of pure memorable enjoyment.

Marvelous

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Very well read version of a wonderful novel. Julian was the last Roman, and perhaps the most thoughtful man to hold the imperial office. With him, the genius of classical antiquity ended and the empire was henceforth ruled by a succession of pious, cruel no nothings.

Hail Julian

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One of the best historical novels I’ve even written. Multiple actors narrating the different characters’ parts give it a cinematic feel.

But the actor that read Julian’s part really couldn’t say Ctesiphon (at best it sounded something like Cetestiphon).

Great book, good narration

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Slow paced but excellent. Definitely helps to know the rough history area before hand, this book really brings it to life.

Superb

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A master novelist retelling the impossibly ironic tale of Julian the Apostate. This is an absorbing fictional history , told to us as from the intimate correspondence of three key witnesses to one of the greatest moments in the history of civilisation,. This is the last gasp of paganism as it is swallowed by the encroaching dark age in which christianity took hold. It is brought to vivid reality through the written interpretations of these epoch shifting moments by the three most eloquent players on this grand stage.

Moving and thought provoking in so many subtle and satisfying ways and particularly if you know anything
of the time of Julian, into the convulsing death throws of the late Western Roman Empire, the prose is hugely satisfying.

The narration is also flawless to my ear, with the three narrators all having their own highly believable characters. It is told so well as to be gently immersive, no less than the content deserves.

It is indeed a true classic and is possibly even better as an audiobook than an actual book...

profound and authentic fictional history

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Excellently performed, and written in a style which is erudite, articulate and very faithful to the style of Roman correspondence and memoirs. And yet...... it doesn't engage or hold much interest. There are pleasingly catty little jibes between the old 'friends' who are corresponding, and the events of Julian's life are told with apparent fidelity: but this is a rather dry and cerebral account, with no sense of physicality or action in a real world. We are told for instance that Wien is 'a little town of stone and wood' - like all towns at that time - but there is none of the wonder and strangeness that one would expect from a contemporary observer. All locations and all characters feel essentially the same, and after listening for a good ten hours in hopes of conflict, drama or interest, I gave up.

Faithful but dreary

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