'The Alexander Trilogy' 

Author: Mary Renault 

Publisher: Penguin Books / 1984

Pages: 877

This massive book is Mary Renault's masterly evocation of ancient Greece and of Alexander the conqueror,  beautiful, beloved - and flawed. Now published for the first time in one volume.

In Fire from Heaven a young Alexander unravels the mysteries of a violent adult world and discovers the divinity deep within him. Later, as he conquers ever eastwards, the love between him and Bagoas is immortalised in The Persian Boy. Then, as death comes to Alexander in Funeral Games, the human vultures gather round.

Eileen Mary Challans, better known by her pen name Mary Renault, 1905-1983, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece.

In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander.

Born in Forest Gate in 1905, she attended St Hugh's College Oxford from 1924 to 1928. After graduating with a Third Class in English, she worked as a nurse and began writing her first novels, which were contemporary romances.

In 1948 she moved to Durban, South Africa with her partner Julie Millard and later to Cape Town where she spent the rest of her life.

Living in South Africa allowed her to write about openly gay characters without fearing the censorship and homophobia of England.

She devoted herself to writing historical fiction in the 1950s, her most successful books.

Renault's works are often rooted in themes relating to love, sexuality and relationships.

Her books attracted a wide gay readership at the time of their publication when few mainstream works depicted homosexuality in a positive light.

Her work has had a generally positive reception by critics and she has been awarded numerous awards and honours.