Julian a novel
The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julianis 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...
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Boston :
Little, Brown, and Company,
[1964]
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| Summary: | The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julianis 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. |
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| Item Description: | Fictional biography of the Fourth Century Roman Emperor, Julian the Apostate, who attempted to thwart Christianity. |
| Physical Description: | viii, 503 pages : map (on lining papers) ; 24 cm Also issued online. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (page 503). |
| ISBN: | 037572706X 9780375727061 |
| Author Notes: | His first novel, Williwaw, was published in 1946 when he was twenty-one years old and working as an associate editor at the publishing company E. P. Dutton. The City and the Pillar was about a handsome, athletic young Virginia man who gradually discovers that he is homosexual, which caused controversy in the publishing world. The New York Times refused to advertise the novel and gave a negative review of it and future novels. He had such trouble getting subsequent novels reviewed that he turned to writing mysteries under the pseudonym Edgar Box and then gave up novel-writing altogether for a time. Once he moved to Hollywood, he wrote television dramas, screenplays, and plays. His films included I Accuse, Suddenly Last Summer with Tennessee Williams, Is Paris Burning? with Francis Ford Coppola, and Ben-Hur. His most successful play was The Best Man, which he also adapted into a film. He started writing novels again in the 1960's including Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckenridge, Burr, Myron, 1876, Lincoln, Hollywood, Live From Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal, and The Golden Age. He also published two collections of essays entitled The Second American Revolution, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1982 and United States: Essays 1952-1992. In 2009, he received the National Book Awards lifetime achievement award. He died from complications of pneumonia on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) |
