Fire from Heaven
by Mary Renault · first published 1969
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Fire from Heaven is a 1969 historical novel by Mary Renault about the childhood and youth of Alexander the Great. It reportedly was a major inspiration for the Oliver Stone film Alexander.
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Mary Renault. Fire From Heaven. I think she was ahead of the curve in recognizing that Alexander had monstrous qualities at a time when he was still seen as a kind of superhero. Tolkein. The Silmarillion. I’ve bounced off this book…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…splinter groups, there's a lot of bizarre-seeming rituals that people undertook. Not to mention accusations of witchcraft. One of the better books I read in my coursework on early modern England was Fire From Heaven, which covers a bunch of this stuff (http://amzn.to/1VzJn8r) One I came across recently, reading one of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels was the practice of wife selling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_(English_custom))
on “Sex, Whipping, and Pottage in Stepney” ↗Mary Renault, a historian of Alexander, wrote a series of three historical novels about his life, starting with Fire from Heaven.
on “Alexander the Great in Firdawsi's Book of Kings” ↗