The Persian Boy was published by Longmans in 1972, the second volume of the Alexander trilogy and Renault’s bestselling novel. Its daring narrative choice — to tell the story of Alexander’s greatest conquests through the eyes of Bagoas, a Persian eunuch who was a catamite of King Darius before becoming Alexander’s lover — transforms military history into an intimate psychological study.
Bagoas narrates from a position of extraordinary privilege and extraordinary limitation: he shares Alexander’s bed but not his councils of war; he sees the conqueror in his most private moments but cannot fully understand his public purposes; he loves Alexander with absolute devotion but knows he is not (and can never be) Hephaistion. This perspective creates a portrait of Alexander that is simultaneously worshipful and clear-eyed: Bagoas sees the greatness and the cruelty, the vision and the drunkenness, the divine ambition and the human loneliness.
The novel covers Alexander’s campaigns from the fall of Persepolis through the march to India and the return to Babylon — including the burning of the palace, the murder of Cleitus, the mutiny at the Hyphasis, and the terrible march through the Gedrosian desert. Each event is rendered through Bagoas’s partial perspective, which forces the reader to infer the military and political dimensions from their emotional shadows.
Renault’s treatment of sexuality is, as always, matter-of-fact: Bagoas’s identity as a eunuch, his sexual history, and his relationship with Alexander are presented without prurience or apology, as natural elements of a culture that organized desire differently from our own.
Collecting The Persian Boy
First edition (Longmans, London, 1972): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- US first (Pantheon, 1972): $15–$40
- Without jacket: $8–$15