WINNER OF THE 1973 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD  By the Author of Stoner In Augustus , his third great novel, John Williams took  on an entirely new challenge, a historical narrative set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire. To tell the story, Williams turned to the epistolary novel, a genre that was new to him, transforming and transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher’s Crossing and the campus novel in Stoner . Augustus is the final triumph of a writer who has come to be recognized around the world as an American master.