Plot Introduction
Like much of Renault's fiction, the book, published in 1972, provides a sympathetic portrait of homosexual love. The Persian Boy is notable for its depiction of the tradition of pederasty in ancient Greece, where relationships between adult men and adolescent boys were celebrated. In the novel, Bagoas is 15 years old when he begins his relationship with Alexander (then about 26). Renault depicts the attachment as lasting until Alexander's death, when Bagoas would have been about 22. She movingly explores the tensions in the triangular relationship between Alexander and his two lovers, Hephaistion and Bagoas, and suggests that Alexander went mad with grief over Hephaistion's untimely death.
Read more about this topic: The Persian Boy
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or introduction:
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.”
—Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)