Mary Renault

In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault's Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure-a king …

The Last of the Wine is Mary Renault's first novel set in ancient Greece, the setting that would become her most important arena. The novel was published in 1956 and is the second of her works to feature male homosexuality as a major theme. It was a bestseller within the gay community. The book is a portrait of Athens …

The Mask of Apollo is a historical novel written by Mary Renault. It is set in ancient Greece shortly after the Peloponnesian War. The story involves the world of live theatre and political intrigue in the Mediterranean at the time. The narrator, Nikeratos, is an invented character, but real historical figures such as …

The Nature of Alexander is the only nonfiction work by novelist Mary Renault.

The Persian Boy is a 1972 historical novel written by Mary Renault and narrated by Bagoas, a young Persian from an aristocratic family who is captured by his father's enemies, castrated, and sold as a slave to the king Darius III, who makes him his favorite. Eventually he becomes the lover and most faithful servant of …

The Praise Singer is a historical novel by Mary Renault first published in 1978. Its narrator and main character is the real-life lyric poet Simonides of Keos, whose life spanned the transition from an oral to a written culture in Ancient Greece. Renault's fiction argues that this transition was in part responsible …