A VIVID, SWEEPING SAGA OF QUEER LOVE AND POLITICS IN ANCIENT GREECE, FROM THE QUEEN OF HISTORICAL FICTION

'Renault's eye for intimacy is amazing' DOUGLAS STUART

'Arresting and beautiful and moving . . . decades ahead of its time' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

Your love made me. Do not take it away; for without love I am a temple forsaken by its god

Athens and Sparta, the mighty city states of ancient Greece, have been locked together in conflict for a quarter of a century. Alexias the Athenian comes of age in these turbulent times, as the golden age fractures into uncertainty and chaos. No longer protected by his family's noble status, he is drawn to the controversial teachings of Socrates - and to another of the philosopher's young followers, Lysis.

The two young men form a passionate bond, becoming both friends and lovers. Together, they learn to hunt and to love, to debate and to wrestle, to grapple with family and loyalty. But all the while, fate leads Alexias to the moment he must stand alongside Lysis in the last great battle of the Peloponnesian War.

'A remarkable novel, vivid and moving . . . a glowing work of art' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

'Of her Greek fictions, The Last of the Wine [is] her most moving' EMMA DONOGHUE

The most vivid and convincing reconstruction of ancient Greek life that I have ever seen. * Sunday Times *
I never learned Latin or Greek; I wasn't raised on the classics, even in translation. So all my sense of the ancient world - its values, its style, the scent of its wars and passions - comes from Mary Renault. Her Theseus novels are perhaps the most exciting of her Greek fictions, and The Last of the Wine the most moving. I turned to writing historical fiction because of something I learned from Renault: that it lets you shake off the mental shackles of your own era, all the categories and labels, and write freely about what really matters to you. * Emma Donoghue *
Not since Robert Graves' I, Claudius has there been such an exciting, living image of the ancient world on this grand scale. It is a glowing work of art * New York Times Book Review *
Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows us their strangeness; discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us -- Hilary Mantel

Mary Renault (1905-1983) was born in London and educated at St Hughs, Oxford. She trained as a nurse at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary, where she met her lifelong partner, Julie Mullard. Her first novel, Purposes of Love, was published in 1937. In 1948, after North Face won a MGM prize worth $150,000, she and Mullard emigrated to South Africa. There, Renault was able to write forthrightly about homosexual relationships for the first time - in her masterpiece, The Charioteer (1953), and then in her first historical novel, The Last of the Wine (1956). Renault's vivid novels set in the ancient world brought her worldwide fame. In 2010 Fire From Heaven was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970.