Fire from Heaven: A Novel of Alexander the Great

This is the first volume of Mary Renault's trilogy on Alexander the Great, the other two being "The Persian Boy" and "Funeral Games". While they are novels, they are quite reliable in their history. The immediacy of the narrative conveys a better understanding of life in those times than most history books. This volume covers Alexander's childhood to young adulthood, including the dramatic events surrounding his ascension to the throne at age 20 after his father's assassination. Though Renault was not an academic, her research for this trilogy was sufficient to became the basis for two non-fiction books on Alexander.Renault is a master at making her characters come alive without violating the confines of their known history. She is an excellent writer, and the Alexander trilogy (at least the first two books) and her "The Last of the Wine" are her best writing in my opinion. After I read this book, I read quite a bit of other literature on Alexander, and then later read this book again. I believe that the more a reader knows about Alexander, the more he/she will appreciate this book. The ancient sources on Alexander are seamlessly woven into the developing narrative. In addition, there are fictionalized adolescent relationships that very well prefigure documented central relationships of his later life, including his lifelong friend Hephestion.Renault clearly likes Alexander, but does not fall victim to the hagiographic style of many Alexander historians before 1950, like Tarn. She is a good counterweight to a modern school of Alexander historians, like Borza, Green, Worthington, etc., who seem intent on deconstructing his greatness and military genius.The book succeeds as history, but even more importantly for this book, it succeeds as a novel. The characters are authentic and the narrative arc is spellbinding. Renault's writing introduced me to historical fiction years ago, and made me a lifelong fan of it.

"Fire from Heaven" may be Mary Renault's best work on Alexander the Great, and I enjoyed it almost as much as I did her other stories about young ancient Greek homosexual men in "Last of the Wine" and her flawed, but also great, gay coming of age story set in 1940's Britain, "The Charioteer." Renault excels in her uncanny ability to depict convincingly young gay boys and men and their developing, often difficult, lives of emerging knowledge and experienced about who they really are. One could also look to Andre Aciman's "Call Me by Your Name," for other excellent writing on this subject.Despite her caveats about the disputed and never to be known actual facts about Alexander's homosexuality in her "Author's Note" at the end of the book, you'd never know Renault had any doubt about his being gay from Day 1. Her story boldly shows Alexander as homosexual even as a young boy, smiling coyly at a handsome envoy who came to visit King Philip, Alexander's father. Alexander's preference for the company of men is never hidden, and it blossoms in full force during his early teenage "friendship" with Hephaestion, the male who turns out to be his life-long lover and bed partner. They were partners in everything for 20 years.Alexander, Renault writes, is precocious in just about every facet of his young life. His brilliance is not limited to how quickly he learned war games as a teenager or his ability to disappear into the wild and survive better than ever, but also in his "understanding" of people and the world around him.Of course, down deep, Alexander is portrayed as a deadly, cold fish, a truly calculating strategist, whose ability to love anyone other than himself emerges only as a consequence of Hephaestion's handling of his emotions and blazing internal fire. Their courtship and early love life is the core of this story.His mother, Olympias, is shown to be a vicious, selfish, scheming witch, and his father, King Philip, hardly is a person to admire, either. There's lots of war talk, war strategy, and war events. I found myself skipping over them to some extent, so that I did not lose the thread of the true story at hand: the love story of Alexander and Hephaestion. Steven Pressfield is a good alternate read for the wars stuff.This is good historical fiction, with, of course, emphasis on "fiction."

I don't read many novels, but this one is exceptional. I have bought and read 12 non-fiction books about Alexander the Great, and watched three documentaries, and this novel just adds to my knowledge of Alexander and Hephaestion. Andrew Chugg's book, "Alexander's Lovers", which I also ordered from Amazon.com, contains the most complete historical knowledge about Hephaestion, and "Fire from Heaven" gives us a glimpse into the possible youthful love between Alexander and Hephaestion. I really enjoyed the segment on page 166 where Miss Renault describes how Alexander and Hephaestion may have reacted to Aischylos' play Myrmindons about Achilles and Patroklos and how the other boys in Aristotle's class were "debating whether those two did anything or not." And the touching description of the first time that Alexander and Hephaestion made love between the thighs on pages 202 and 203 is so sweet without being graphic. Page 238 when we read, "Once in the dark he [Alexander] had murmured in Macedonian, [to Hephaestion]"You are the first and the last," and his voice might have been charged with ecstasy or intolerable grief." And page 226 when we read, "Alexander was lying flat on his back, staring upward. Suddenly he grasped Hephaestion in an embrace so fierce that it knocked the breath out of him,and said, "Without you I should go mad." "I too without you," said Hephaestion with loving ardor." Fire from Heaven also describes Alexander's relationship with his father which really helps one to understand the love-hate feelings between them. Anyone who has studied the life of Alexander the Great should read "Fire from Heaven". I've read it three times and wept everytime I've read it. Alexander was a very emotional man and I think he would understand my feelings. This book is well worth your time and money.