The Persian Boy
A Novel of Alexander the Great
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The Persian Boy
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Narrated by:
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Roger May
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Written by:
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Mary Renault
About this listen
The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander's life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas is sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but finds freedom with Alexander the Great after the Macedon army conquers his homeland.
Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander's mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone.
©1972 Mary Renault (P)2014 Audible StudiosWhat the critics say
"Mary Renault's portraits of the ancient world are fierce, complex and eloquent, infused at every turn with her life-long passion for the Classics. Her characters live vividly both in their own time, and in ours." (Madeline Miller)
"All my sense of the ancient world - its values, its style, the scent of its wars and passions - comes from Mary Renault. 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)
What listeners say about The Persian Boy
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Tee
- 2017-11-30
Alexander the Not-So-Great
The book started out okay, but the pace very quickly fizzled out. It was painful progress to finish the 20-hour audiobook.
The story was told from the perspective of Bagoas, an eunuch who worked himself into Alexander’s favour and became his lover. All the characters were poorly developed, including Alexander and Bagoas. In the eyes of Bagoas, Alexander came across as a good-hearted and fuzzy-brained twink moseying across Middle East to India and back, with neither style nor majesty. Bagoas’s own role was no more than that of a serving boy, with no other purposes than pleasing Alexander. He was small-minded and jealous, and shallow - lacking insights and introspection about the historical characters and events that unfolded around him; his sole concern was his need for Alexander. As for other characters like Hephiastion, Ptolemy, Roxanne ... uhhh, who??
Reading Alexander’s exploits felt a bit like reading Wikipedia’s list of Alexander’s conquests. Except they were overlaid with repeated accounts of Bagoas serving Alexander in the tent (changing his clothes, bathing him, serving him food, bringing him water, combing his hair... etc etc) with accompanying (cringe-worthy) descriptions of Alexander’s tender responses in smiles and gentle words. No worthy conversations nor any insights of Alexander’s / his generals’ / Bagoas’s thinking.
Certain accounts of Bagoas being allowed to accompany Alexander on his war campaigns felt far-fetched. This created an impression that Bagoas’s account had stretched the truth to insert himself into places / events in history - the way some people exaggerate their roles when retelling stories of the past. No doubt this is a work of fiction, but it should still be believable.
Overall, I wouldn’t bother with the other two books in the trilogy.
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