Book description
'The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat - Sarah Waters
Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece to India. Fire From Heaven tells the story of the years…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Fire from Heaven as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I had no special interest in Alexander the Great, but happened on Fire From Heaven in the library. It was set in Ancient Greece. I liked historical novels, so I read it. Became a fan!
This first book takes that world-bestriding conqueror and imagines him as a lonely child in a fraught palace—and as a teenager, his father assassinated, his world breaking up around him. It follows him as time changes him into a brilliant, daring general. In the series’ succeeding books, he becomes a lover and then half-mad with bereavement, and we see his "empire" quickly dissolve after his…
From Susan's list on time and change.
Any recommendation list of novels about Alexander must include Mary Renault, queen of Greek historical fiction. Fire from Heaven covers his childhood/youth and remains many readers’ initial introduction to him. Her knowledge of Greece, both the land and its history, is rich, and she was first to depict, in a positive way, Alexander’s relationship with Hephaistion as more than friendship. Ironically, the book’s publication coincided with the NYC Stonewall Riots in June of 1969. Yet however progressive her view of homoerotic attachments, she paints a troublingly misogynistic portrait of Alexander’s mother Olympias. The book contains a few errors as…
From Jeanne's list on Alexander the Great.
If you love Fire from Heaven...
Serpent Visions
Set in pre-literate Bronze Age Greece, Serpent Visions reimagines the enigmatic myth of the gender-switching seer Teiresias. Walking in the deep woods, he strikes apart two coupling serpents and transforms into a woman. Seven years later, she, now called Teira, encounters mating serpents, strikes between them, and becomes male again.…
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