Books about Saturnalia from Amazon.com

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Every culture has its wild entertainment, but the Roman Saturnalia is looked upon as the granddaddy of them all.

Roberts's vivid fictional account of the annual event takes place in first century Rome is a historically correct picture of excess, with the city's ordinary life shut down, all rules and most laws inoperative, and even slaves permitted to celebrate without restraint. At the same time, the noted family of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger have reluctantly summoned the young playboy, banished to the island of Rhodes for his wild ways, to seek his help in solving a crime that touches them directly and dangerously. They need him to use his investigative talents to look into the poison death of a politically powerful relative and the suspicion that it is the man's wife who administered the dose. Decius, convinced she is innocent (of this murder, at any rate) looks further for the killer---a quest that leads him to a secret, banned cult of witchcraft being practiced by highborn Romans of both sexes. With the witches at his heels, Decius plunges into the maelstrom of Rome at the height of Saturnalia, and barely escapes with his life.
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Catherine Pierce's debut, Famous Last Words, is a love letter to life, poetry, and all things American Beginning with a series of literal love poems (to the word "lonesome", to blank space, to doo-wop, to fear, etc.), Pierce whisks the reader on a cross-country road trip (both literally and figuratively) that takes a tangential spree into a series of genre films and ends with gallows humor in the re-imagining of the events surrounding the famous last words of icons like Billy the Kid, Marie Antoinette, Isadora Duncan, and Pancho Villa. From start to finish, Pierce's book is a delight to the senses, a playful, nostalgic dance that ends with the reader wanting more..
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Letters to Poets honors and commemorates the hundredth anniversary of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet by partnering a selection of 14 of the country's leading contemporary poets with 14 emerging poets and documenting their correspondences. These poets challenge the hierarchies and pitfalls endemic to the mentoring process, and ask some of the day's toughest, most vital questions concerning race, class, and gender. Spanning a range of not only generations but cultural, aesthetic, and economic backgrounds, these diverse pairings both challenge and support each other artistically and politically. The result is in turns dramatic, enlightening, and entertaining..
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"I Want You To Know That My Eye Is Upon You"

It is December 1681, and the words of Mr. Baggot, the tithingman, terrify young William William is living a strange double life. By day he is a printer's apprentice living in a white man's house. By night, he is Weetasket of the Narraganset tribe who must risk Baggot's wrath to search for his lost brother. Then comes the winter celebration of the Saturnalia -- the ancient Roman holiday on which masters and slaves trade roles. Will William's secret be revealed? And what dark deed of others will be brought to light on this fateful night?

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Poetry. Winner of the 2005 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, selected by Bob Hicok. "CORRESPONDENCE," writes Mark Doty, "is a fresh accomplishment, swift with feeling and intelligence, the work of a restless critical mind mapping its way toward a way to bear the weight of love." Kathleen Graber's debut book takes us on a trip through history and time, varying her subjects with speed and seamlessness, to a dizzying, dazzling effect. From the Philadelphia Eagles to Cornell's boxes, from a fertility clinic to Daguerre's prints, from Kafka to running over two cats, from Annette Benning to Marianne Moore, Kathleen Graber's poems embrace what her inquisitive mind traverses, ensnaring past and present, familiar and foreign, soulful and scientific, in a celebration of chaos that is generous and healing..
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Lucian (ca. 120–190 CE), the satirist from Samosata on the Euphrates, started as an apprentice sculptor, turned to rhetoric and visited Italy and Gaul as a successful travelling lecturer, before settling in Athens and developing his original brand of satire. Late in life he fell on hard times and accepted an official post in Egypt.

Although notable for the Attic purity and elegance of his Greek and his literary versatility, Lucian is chiefly famed for the lively, cynical wit of the humorous dialogues in which he satirises human folly, superstition and hypocrisy. His aim was to amuse rather than to instruct. Among his best works are A True Story (the tallest of tall stories about a voyage to the moon), Dialogues of the Gods (a 'reductio ad absurdum' of traditional mythology), Dialogues of the Dead (on the vanity of human wishes), Philosophies for Sale (great philosophers of the past are auctioned off as slaves), The Fisherman (the degeneracy of modern philosophers), The Carousal or Symposium (philosophers misbehave at a party), Timon (the problems of being rich), Twice Accused (Lucian's defence of his literary career) and (if by Lucian) The Ass (the amusing adventures of a man who is turned into an ass).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Lucian is in eight volumes.

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Poetry. Art. Acclaimed poet and art critic John Yau, author of fourteen books of poetry, teams up with esteemed painter Thomas Nozkowski to create the exquisite Ing Grish, the second in the Saturnalia Books Poet/Artist collaboration series. Yau's comic and cutting poetry collides with the work of Nozkowski, whom the New Yorker has termed "the Chardin of contemporary abstraction." The end result is a dazzling and vibrant concoction of visual and written imagery. All the poems in ING GRISH are new, as are Nozkowski's paintings and illustrations, which he created expressly for this collection..
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Getorix (15) has one last opportunity to earn his father's regard and welcome into the Otherworld He must face death with courage at the end of the Roman triumph. Instead the gods throw him a different challenge Can Getorix accept friendship from the Roman who spares his life if the cost is his honor? Getorix has one last opportunity to gain his fatherOs respect and earn welcome into the Otherworld as a man. At almost fifteen winters, he marches beside his father, a defeated Celtic leader, in the Roman triumph parade -- a celebration that ends in death. To face the ordeal of death before the Romans will truly be his man-making. Instead, the gods throw him an entirely different challenge Can Getorix accept friendship with the Roman who spares his life if the cost is his honor? GetorxOs adventure leads young readers of any age into the Roman world at the dawn of the Empire. Authentic history with the lure of fantasy.Unique opportunity for young adult readers to experience the Roman world at the dawn of Empire. Supported with glossary and authorOs notes about Roman life. Competing cultures, embodied in the Roman aristocratO son and the Celtic captive, find understanding in this adventure. in ancient Rome at the dawn of the Empire..
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