Tiberius Caesar (ePub)

A great work of literature and a profound reflection on state terror from a man who spent forty years fighting it.

This free-standing work of fiction by one of Poland's leading dissidents of the Solidarity era, Jacek Bocheński, completes His Notorious Roman Trilogy--probably the most important literary work to come out of Eastern Europe since World War II.

In the trilogy's first volume, its picaresque Divine Julius, or How to Overthrow a Republic in Four Easy Steps, Bocheński showed how by a combination of pie-in-the-sky political promises, charm, flattery, bribery, and intimidation, Julius Caesar seized political power in Rome and neutered its Republican institutions. In this volume of the trilogy, its last, Bocheński shows where the loss of Republican institutions leads to: a situation in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a moral, intellectual, emotional zero whose only skill in life is to grab power and hang onto it. At any cost.

Tiberius Caesar is a vertigo-inducing look into the great echo chamber of fear; and a psychological insight into the mediocrity who ruled, terrorized, and murdered all his betters because a) he could and b) "they made him do it."

This is also a brilliant work of literature, with deeply moving passages of beautiful prose, many of which could stand as independent essays:

• how the police state hires its executioners

• what it is like to read--perhaps better said: to work through--Tacitus in his original Latin

• an evocative (and hilarious) description of a summer night on Capri in 1970

• an imaginary visit to a Roman bordello in AD 16

• a moving and stylistically astonishing scene of Cocceius Nerva reading on his deathbed Cicero's On the Laws

If you enjoy the rich prose of writers like Kazuo Ishiguro or Orhan Pamuk, the style of this book will astonish and delight you with its many pleasures.

And if, in your pleasant and secure life in a Western, constitutional democracy you have grown complacent and bored with all the freedoms you take for granted--you should read this as a warning. Because you should be afraid. You should be very afraid. If you lose your Republic, this is what you will have.

This is a very beautiful and a very important book. Don't miss it. Pick up your copy today.

Jacek Bocheński (b. 1926) is the leading literary figure of modern Poland, a prolific author, classicist scholar, former president of the Polish PEN Club, former president of the Polish Authors’ Society (SLP), former president of the Intellectual Property Association (ZAIKS), former member of The Citizen’s Committee serving the office of President Lech Wałęsa, a highly-regarded and much-decorated opposition freedom fighter, banned by communist censorship, imprisoned during the Martial Law in Poland (1981-1983), and today widely honored as the Nestor of Polish literature: holder of the Grand Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta, of the Golden Medal of the Order Gloria Artis, and The Grand Ambassador of Polish Language.