Amazon.com description: Product Description: Conspiracy abounds in this historical novel about the fortunes of a family in third-century Rome, a city that had been open and secure for three centuries but which was fortified with an enormous wall by the Emperor Aurelian in 270-275. Dominating a seething listless and dangerous polyglot city, the wall is inescapable and darkly ambiguous, symptomatic of a great social order perhaps grappling with its death throes. Words laid on like bright gobs of paint, creating finally an expansive canvas of extraordinary impressionistic brilliance...a rich and intricate work, suggestive and thought-provoking."" - Sunday Telegraph.