The Persian Boy [Paperback]

Narrated by Bagoas, the Persian eunuch "inherited" by Alexander from the entourage of the defeated King Darius, PERSIAN BOY portrays the great Macedonian as both as demi-god and as all too human. He is at once gigantic, fearless, vainglorious, unstoppable,and ruthless on the one hand and tender, solicitous, sentimental (he names a city after his dead dog Perditas), compassionate, and loyal to a fault on the other. Friendship he seems to value above all else, evidenced by his reaction to the death of his boyhood companion and most trusted confidante, Hephaistion. He hangs the doctor who could not save his friend and then plunges into an orgy of despair. Still he never loses sight of his great ambition to remake the entire world in his own image and, like any truly great man, moves ahead despite grief and his own physical impairments.

This is an amazing recreation of the ancient world. If any book succeeds in relaying the sights, sounds, smells, customs, dress, mating habits, etc., of a distant time and place, this is it. Bagoas makes for an engaging storyteller. He holds nothing back, and if he turns out to be a bit of a snob, well, what else would one expect from the world's most beautiful eunuch, one who can give no less than the King of the World such sensual fulfillment?
Like any snob, Bagoas favors excellence over mediocrity, and in Alexander excellence is given human form. No wonder Bagoas loves him so! And that love story provides this novel its center, its tender heart. It is subtle, suggestive, and very real. Male writers should be as adept as Renault in their depictions of male male relationships, demphasizing the physical and giving more attention to the emotional.

The novel bogs down in places and becomes repetitious, but it is well worth sticking with till the end.

But most of all there is love, and once we get over the nature of that love, we can surrender ourselves to enjoying the flow of the story as we follow Alexander the Great, one of history's most fascinating figures, on a journey of conquest through the known world.

We follow him from the viewpoint of the Persian boy of the title, a narrator very different to the usual fictional protagonist. But this boy is not fictional, he really lived, and I venture to suggest that Mary Renault's tale is not half as colourful as the real thing must have been.

I find it hard to lay a handle on this book. It's fiction, it's history, it's a romance, a war story, an epic adventure. It deals with the great themes of humanity and it's a ripping yarn.

If you've read any of Mary Renault's other books, you won't need convincing. If you haven't, then enjoy this one as your first taste of her opus, because it is one of her very best.