CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
Am I Cold, by Martin Kongstad (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99)
IT’S 2008, just before the world suffers the lash of another capitalist convulsion.
In the rootless but savvy domain of Denmark’s new bourgeoisie — artists, restauranteurs and drug-frazzled rock stars — washed-up ex-food critic Mikkel Vallin attempts to inject meaning into his life after his marriage collapses and his job is taken away from him.
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
Before Greek myths reached the multiplex, they were weapons of political satire. CALLUM SMITH explores the evidence
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book



