Fire from Heaven: A Novel of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

Overview

Alexander’s beauty, strength, and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son’s loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle’s tutoring provoked his mind and Homer’s Iliad fueled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon’s cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander’s skills had grown to match his fiery ambition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375726828
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/11/2002
Series:	The Alexander Trilogy , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	96,759
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Mary Renault was born in London and educated at Oxford. She then trained for three years as a nurse, and wrote her first published novel, Promise of Love. Her next three novels were written while serving in WWII. After the war, she settled in South Africa and traveled considerably in Africa and Greece. It was at this time that she began writing her brilliant historical reconstructions of ancient Greece, including The King Must Die, The Last of the Wine, and The Persian Boy. She died in Cape Town in 1983.

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Excerpted from "Fire from Heaven"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Mary Renault.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Written with her usual vigor and imagination...Mary Renault has a great talent.” –The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher