Spurius, A Novel

David László Conhaim is passionate about discovering stories and people somehow lost to history – and to inspire or renew public interest in them. His socially conscious, exhaustively researched novels in recent years have focused on the multiracial struggle for the American West, emphasising issues of family, identity and belonging. Conhaim’s Paul Robeson-inspired Western All Man’s Land (Broken Arrow Press, 2019) was selected Finalist Best Novel in the Western Writers of America Spur Awards and won ‘Maverick’ in the Will Rogers Medallion Awards. His 2021 novel The Unredeemed – a sequel to 2017’s Comanche Captive – was a Best Novel winner in the Will Rogers Medallion Awards and a Best Novel finalist in the Western Fictioneers’ Peacemaker Awards. In 1995, Conhaim co-founded The Prague Revue, the longest-running literary journal to serve the community of international writers in Prague. For The Prague Revue, he wrote a fictional remembrance of Miguel de Unamuno, which Gore Vidal ‘read with delight’, republishing it in the 2024 All Man’s Land expanded second edition as Don Miguel – The Wise. Conhaim was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1968.

• 'List of illustrationsForeword by the authorMap: The Mediterranean in the Age of SpuriusThe NovelPrologue: Embassy to Ephesus: Spurius and Scipio Africanus encounter Hannibal, 193 BCChapter I: Affairs in Rome, 146 BC; Bacchic disturbances, 186 BC; consul’s inquiry beginsChapter II: Bacchanalians’ murderous response; cult exposedChapter III: Rome terrorised; consul addresses Senate, Assembly; proscription of BacchanaliansChapter IV: Bacchic cult crushed in Latium and Rome; events in OstiaChapter V: Affairs in Rome, 146 BC; celebrations in Rome, 186 BC; war with Gauls; intervention in BithyniaEpilogue: Northeast to Nicomedia: Spurius demands surrender of Hannibal, 185 BCBeyond SpuriusAuthor’s NoteRemembering Gore VidalAcknowledgementsChronological SummarySenatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus (the inscription on which the novel is based)Select BibliographyAbout the Author

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