The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault - ISBN: 9781844089611
Paperback
Love, war, and philosophy intertwine in ancient Greece’s tumultuous final days.

The Last of the Wine

A Virago Modern Classic

$36.89

  • Paperback

    416 pages

  • Release Date

    13 October 2015

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Summary

“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 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<…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781844089611
ISBN-10:1844089614
Author:Mary Renault, Charlotte Mendelson
Publisher:Little, Brown Book Group
Imprint:Virago Press Ltd
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:416
Release Date:13 October 2015
Weight:300g
Dimensions:198mm x 128mm x 26mm
Series:Virago Modern Classics
What They're Saying

Critics Review

The most vivid and convincing reconstruction of ancient Greek life that I have ever seen. - Sunday Times

I never learned Latin or Greek; I wasn’t raised on the classics, even in translation. So 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 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

Not since Robert Graves’ I, Claudius has there been such an exciting, living image of the ancient world on this grand scale. It is a glowing work of art - New York Times Book 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

About The Author

Mary Renault

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.

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