The Nature of Alexander - Hardcover

Mary Renault

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394491130 ISBN 13: 9780394491134

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1975

Synopsis

Alexander the Great, like his boyhood hero Achilles, traded long life for lasting fame. His fame has lasted -- far longer than the knowledge of his world, which is needed to understand him. He has been seen by every age in terms of its own life style. Romance has wrapped him in fantasy. Propaganda has exploited him since the days of imperial Rome. He has been condemned for sins which to men of his time were merits, and credited with nineteenth-century virtues which his own culture despised. The aim of Mary Renault's study has been to peel off from this complex and dynamic human being the accumulated layers of wishful thinking, both idealizing and ideological, and show him not in our terms but his: as he saw himself, and was seen by his friends, his enemies, the men he led and the peoples he conquered. Mary Renault's best-selling novels about Alexander, Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, have involved her in some years' close study of his life. Crucial episodes which she has re-examined are the murder of his father Philip, in which he has been accused of complicity; the sack of Thebes; the death of his general Parmenion: and the wishes he expressed upon his deathbed. From a study of the medical evidence she has suggested important possibilities about Alexander's death, and that of his lifelong friend Hephaestion. This hard-hitting, controversial biography, firmly based on the sources, challenges the ideological interpreters of Alexander, past and present, who have sought to wrench him out of the context of his era. The text is supported by carefully chosen illustrations, many of them specially commissioned, reproducing contemporary art, documents or reconstructions of events, and modern photographs of the territories Alexander covered in his travels.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

The acclaimed biography of Alexander the Great.

About the Author

MARY RENAULT has written over a dozen novels, has had her work adapted for radio, stage, and screeen, and has been the subject of documentaries and biographies. She is as widely known for her forthright treatment of gay relationships as she is her historical restructions of ancient Greece. She was born in London and educated at Oxford. She then trained as a nurse, where she met her lifelong partner Julie Mullard. After during World War II, she and Mullard settled in South Africa and traveled considerably in Africa and Greece. It was at this time that she began writing her historical novels, including The King Must Die, The Last of the Wine, and The Persian Boy. The biography The Nature of Alexander is one of her only non-fiction books. She died in Cape Town in 1983.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 1975
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394491130
• ISBN 13: 9780394491134
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240