The Bull from the Sea

The greater part of me had been Theseus the Athenian, team-leader of the Cranes; the odds-on fancy, the back-somersault boy, the first of the bull-leapers. . . Now it was time to be my father's son.
Having freed the city of Athens from the terrible tribute demanded by the ruler of Knossos - the sacrifice of noble youths and maidens to the appetite of the Labyrinth's monster - Theseus has returned home to find his father dead and himself the new king. But his adventures have only just begun: now he must confront the Amazons, capture their queen, Hippolyta, and face the tragic results of his wife Phaedra's jealous rage.
Weaving together fragments of myth and ancient history, this thrilling reimagining brings to life a world in which heroes battled monsters and gods strode the earth.
'Mary Renault's portraits of the ancient world are fierce, complex and eloquent' MADELINE MILLER
'All my sense of the ancient world - its values, its style, the scent of its wars and passions - comes from Mary Renault' EMMA DONOGHUE
'An important and wonderful writer' GUARDIAN

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.