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Counting the Stars is a
captivating tale of forbidden love and
bestselling author Helen Dunmore's tenth
novel.
In the heat of Rome's long summer, the
poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia
Metelli, meet in secret.
Living at the heart of
sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the
time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is
obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate
poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even
of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is 'her dear
poet', but possibly not her only interest . . .
Their Rome is a city of extremes. Tenants are packed
into ramshackle apartment blocks while palatial villas
house the magnificence of the families who control Rome.
Armed street gangs clash in struggles for political
power. Slaves are the eyes and ears of everything that
goes on, while civilization and violence are equals,
murder is the easy option and poison the weapon of
choice.
Catallus' relationship with Clodia is one of
the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in
history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the
beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late
Republic.
'She reels you in . . . Dunmore has a gift
for turning every genre she touches to gold'
Telegraph
`Dunmore at her most innovative and
daring . . . a powerful and convincing study of fame and
notoriety . . . captivating and compelling' Time
Out
'Dunmore's strengths as a novelist have
always included her skill in sensuous description and
her ability to convey the promises and the dangers of
erotic love. The Rome she has so vividly realised in
Counting the Stars provides a new stage on which
to display those strengths' Sunday Times
Helen
Dunmore is the author of twelve novels: Zennor in
Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize;
Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which
won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead;
Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked
Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for
the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the
Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning
Ruby; House of Orphans; Counting the
Stars; The Betrayal, which was
longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, and The
Greatcoat. She is also a poet, children's
novelist and short-story writer.
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