Julian cover art

Julian

A Novel

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Julian

By: Gore Vidal
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner, George Newbern, David de Vries, Jeff Cummings
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £24.99

Buy Now for £24.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.

©1962, 1964 copyright renewed 1990, 1992 by Gore Vidal. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Political Ancient History War Ancient Greece

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Creation cover art
Burr cover art
Palimpsest cover art
United States: Essays 1952-1992 cover art
Ancient Evenings cover art
The Last of the Wine cover art
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire cover art
The Autobiography of Malcolm X cover art
Her Hidden Genius cover art
The Eagle of the Ninth cover art
The Lincoln Conspiracy cover art
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World cover art
Brave New World cover art
The Alignment Problem cover art
Musashi cover art
Atlas Shrugged cover art
All stars
Most relevant
A classic from 1964: great reading, great voices, very interesting novel. Every day an hour of pure memorable enjoyment.

Marvelous

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A master novelist retelling the impossibly ironic tale of Julian the Apostate. This is an absorbing fictional history , told to us as from the intimate correspondence of three key witnesses to one of the greatest moments in the history of civilisation,. This is the last gasp of paganism as it is swallowed by the encroaching dark age in which christianity took hold. It is brought to vivid reality through the written interpretations of these epoch shifting moments by the three most eloquent players on this grand stage.

Moving and thought provoking in so many subtle and satisfying ways and particularly if you know anything
of the time of Julian, into the convulsing death throws of the late Western Roman Empire, the prose is hugely satisfying.

The narration is also flawless to my ear, with the three narrators all having their own highly believable characters. It is told so well as to be gently immersive, no less than the content deserves.

It is indeed a true classic and is possibly even better as an audiobook than an actual book...

profound and authentic fictional history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
One of the best historical novels I’ve even written. Multiple actors narrating the different characters’ parts give it a cinematic feel.

But the actor that read Julian’s part really couldn’t say Ctesiphon (at best it sounded something like Cetestiphon).

Great book, good narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very well read version of a wonderful novel. Julian was the last Roman, and perhaps the most thoughtful man to hold the imperial office. With him, the genius of classical antiquity ended and the empire was henceforth ruled by a succession of pious, cruel no nothings.

Hail Julian

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Slow paced but excellent. Definitely helps to know the rough history area before hand, this book really brings it to life.

Superb

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews