I, Claudius by Robert Graves
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a great book. Here, Graves takes some liberties with history, obviously, as no one knew what did or did not happen. But we do see the corruption of individuals within families interwrapped with such a complete power as to be a heady frightful mess.
While I saw the BBC tv show in serial as a teenager, this helped me appreciate history in a way that I did not for a long time. The interrelation of life, family, power, money and all the things that make us human is what elevates this story to a point of the human sublime.
