Robert Harris Returns to Ancient Rome with 'Agrippa' — A General's Memoir from the Shadows of Empire
Robert Harris's latest novel Agrippa arrives in August 2026, returning the bestselling author to ancient Rome for the first time since his Cicero trilogy and his standalone novel Pompeii (The Guardian). Published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Random House UK under ISBN 9781529154412 (Penguin Random House UK), the book takes its name from Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the right-hand man of Octavius — the man who would become Caesar Augustus.
Harris frames the novel as a fictional memoir. Agrippa writes it in haste at fifty, his health failing from a gammy leg, pouring out his account of a life lived at the centre of power (The Guardian). The story spans the Roman civil war, the assassination of Julius Caesar, and the battle of Actium — the naval clash that cleared Octavius's path to becoming Rome's first emperor.
The publisher's synopsis begins with Caesar dead and two teenage boys stepping onto the stage of history: one is Caesar's seventeen-year-old nephew Octavius; the other is Agrippa (Penguin Random House UK). What follows is the story of their friendship and partnership, as Harris depicts Agrippa as "the greatest general of the period" and "effective co-ruler of the Roman world for many years" (The Guardian). Penguin Random House Canada describes the novel as Harris's "monumental return to the world of ancient Rome on the edge of dictatorship" (Penguin Random House Canada).
The novel's central tension is historical, not invented. Octavius, in his own account of his achievements — the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, a public inscription that served as a first-century political résumé — gave Agrippa only two passing mentions (The Guardian). Harris lets Agrippa answer back. The Guardian's review, published on 17 August 2026, describes the narration as "almost comically unambitious prose," with Agrippa preoccupied not with glory but with infrastructure — aqueducts and pipe-laying (The Guardian). The general who won Actium would apparently rather talk about drains.
Harris announced the novel on his official Facebook page in September 2025, confirming an August 2026 release and opening pre-orders (Facebook). In North America, Doubleday Books will publish the novel on 1 September 2026 (Facebook). Kirkus Reviews, which has already published its assessment, summarises the book as a dying Roman recalling his lifelong friendship with the man who became Emperor Augustus, writing his memoir "a few short years before the Common Era" (Kirkus Reviews).
For Harris, Agrippa extends a body of Roman-set fiction that has made him one of the most widely read historical novelists working in English. His earlier Roman books — Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator, the Cicero trilogy, plus Pompeii — are all listed on his Penguin author page alongside the new title (Penguin Random House UK). Readers who followed Cicero's career through the courts and the Senate will now meet a very different Roman: a soldier and a builder who, at least in Harris's telling, preferred waterworks to war.
