Description

‘Mary Renault is a shining light’ HILARY MANTEL

‘Mary Renault’s portraits of the ancient world are fierce, complex and eloquent’ MADELINE MILLER

The sequel to The King Must Die. The Bull from the Sea continues the story of the hero Theseus after his return from Crete.

Having freed the city of Athens from the terrible tribute demanded by the ruler of Knossos – the sacrifice of noble youths and maidens to the appetite of the Labyrinth’s monster – Theseus has returned home to find his father dead and himself the new king. But his adventures have only just begun: he still must confront the Amazons, capture their queen, Hippolyta, and face the tragic results of Phaedra’s jealous rage.

Piecing together fragments of myth and ancient history, this thrilling retelling of the legend of Theseus brings to life a world in which heroes battled monsters and gods strode the earth.

‘An important and wonderful writer . . . she set a course into serious-minded, psychologically intense historical fiction that today seems more important than ever’ Sam Jordison, Guardian

Publisher 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'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 I never learned Latin or Greek; I wasn't raised on the classics, even in translation. 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 think 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