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The Last of the Wine
 
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The Last of the Wine (Paperback)

by Mary Renault (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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The Last of the Wine + The King Must Die + The Bull from the Sea
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Product details

  • Paperback: 356 pages
  • Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd; New edition edition (6 May 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099463555
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099463559
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 77,989 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #7 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > R > Renault, Mary

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Product Description

Product Description

Alexias, a young Athenian of good family, grows up just as the Peloponnesian War is drawing to a close. The adult world he enters is one in which the power and influence of his class have been undermined by the forces of war, and more and more Alexias finds himself drawn to the controversial teachings of Sokrates. Among the great thinker's followers Alexias meets Lysis, and the two youths become inseparable, wrestling together in the palaestra, journeying to the Olympic Games and fighting in the wars against Sparta. On the great historical canvas of famine, siege, and civil conflict, their relationship captures vividly the intricacies of classical Greek culture.


About the Author

Mary Renault was educated at Clifton High School, Bristol and St Hugh's College, Oxford. Having completed nursing training in 1937, she then wrote her first novel Promise of Love. Her next three novels were written during off-time duty whilst serving in the war. In 1948 she went to live in South Africa but travelled widely. It was her trip to Greece and her visits to Corinth, Samos, Crete, Delos, Aegina and other islands, as well as to Athens, Sounion and Marathon, that resulted in her brilliant historical reconstructions of Ancient Greece. Mary Renault died in 1983.

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Read it, all aspiring historical novelists, and take note, 15 Feb 2007
By Caroline Galwey "pedantic romantic" (Essex, U.K.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
In the slew of wordier, more hyped fiction about the classical world that is engulfing us at the moment, I hope some readers are prompted to go back to Mary Renault. Her books are an object lesson in what you can leave out. It's not about research, it's not about pages of painstaking archaeological description leavened by sword-slashing and peplum-ripping, it's about the kind of imaginitive immersion in an ancient culture that can enable the author to present it in its own terms, without explication, but so that the perennial dilemmas of the soul that were present then as now leap across to the modern reader, defamiliarised and sharpened by their alien setting.
The Last of the Wine is about Athens in the time of Socrates, but is above all an Oedipal tragedy of the starkness that you would expect in a culture where fathers had the power of life and death over their children. Alexias finds out that his father never meant him to survive and this knowledge blights their relationship and his whole life, successful and adventurous though it is on the surface. In a bitterly poignant moment, when the father lies dying, he tries to ask forgiveness but Alexias thinks he only wants to be told all over again that he was right; it is symptomatic of how Alexias, unlike his lover Lysis, is too emotionally scarred to escape from the conventions of his doomed society - but Lysis dies (as does Socrates), and Alexias survives, bereft, disillusioned, revealing much more as a narrator than he has understood himself.

For the combination of page-turning narrative brilliance with psychological insight, no one rivals Mary Renault. Read it, read all her other books on ancient Greece, The King Must Die, The Bull from the Sea, The Mask of Apollo, the Alexander trilogy, The Praise Singer. Mouth-watering, stomach-filling writing, the kind of meal one remembers years later.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The human side of Thucydides, 25 May 2006
By Roman Clodia (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
Renault takes Thucydides' magisterial account of the Peloponnesian War, the deadly conflict between Athens and Sparta in the second half of the 5th century bc, and shows us what it meant to the ordinary people growing up and coming of age in the middle of the war that lasted over 30 years and broke the power of classical Athens.
Her 'heroes' are young men who study under Socrates, fight against the Spartans and witness the struggles of Alcibiades and Lysander.
If you've read Thucydides, this is a wonderful fictional complement, and if you haven't then if this doesn't make you want to, nothing will!
Steeped in the cruelty, violence and beauty of ancient Greece, this is a beautifully written and subtle novel that really whisks you back 2,500 years so that you can experience the texture of life then for yourself. Brilliant.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Historical Novel, 19 Aug 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The Last of the Wine (Vintage) (Paperback)
Renault demonstrates a true understanding of the classical world and Greek culture (unlike many novelists, who demonstrate only a superficial understanding). In addition, the tale itself is gripping, and exceptionally well written.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A model for historical novelists
In the slew of wordier, more hyped fiction about the classical world that is engulfing us at the moment, I hope some readers are prompted to go back to Mary Renault. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Caroline Galwey

5.0 out of 5 stars Among my most valuable reading ever.
I came across this paperback when I was 15 and keep it still, 45 years later. It has to be possibly the most informative and thought-provoking work I've ever come across. Read more
Published 14 months ago by M.I.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Platonic ideal of a historical novel... perfection
This is a book that dumps you squarely in the agora, the symposium, the trireme and the battlefield. There is not a single wasted syllable, not one sentence that rings false. Read more
Published on 17 May 2000 by T. D. Welsh

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
She is a wonderful author, and if anyone is interested in ancient Greek history there is no better way to imagine what life must have been like, but through the eyes of Mary... Read more
Published on 17 Jan 2000

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