Funeral Games

'The Alexander Trilogy contains some of Renault's finest writing. Lyrical, wise, compelling: the novels are a wonderful imaginative feat' SARAH WATERSThe heavens say it begins with the death of the King . . . Alexander the Great, conqueror of an empire stretching from Greece to Egypt to India, is dead at the age of thirty-three. His only direct heirs are two unborn sons, and every long-simmering faction is poised to explode into the vacuum of power. As his wives, distant relative and generals vie for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army, with fatal results, Alexander's fragile empire is torn to pieces - but his legend will endure across worlds he had only imagined.In the final novel of her stunning trilogy, Mary Renault vividly reimagines the life of Alexander the Great, the charismatic leader whose drive and ambition created a legend. 'Brilliant and brutal... she has retained her unnerving genius for making the remote past live without diminishing its remoteness and alien glitter' SUNDAY TIMES'Discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us' HILARY MANTEL'The Alexander Trilogy stands as one of the most important works of fiction in the twentieth century' ANTONIA SENIOR

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.