The King Must Die
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Slipcase: Good
Pages: Good
From the labyrinthine corridors of Knossos to the blood-soaked arenas of Crete, The King Must Die plunges the reader into the ancient world of Theseus — warrior, king, and sacrifice — with a visceral immediacy that makes myth feel as urgent as breath. Mary Renault chronicles the legendary hero's journey not as mere folklore, but as a psychologically rich narrative of destiny and devotion: from his youth in Troizen, through his harrowing years as a bull-dancer in Crete, to the fateful moment when myth and mortality converge. Renault's prose is precise yet luminous, grounding the supernatural in the gritty, sensory realities of Bronze Age Greece, and presenting Theseus as a man shaped by ritual, faith, and the inexorable will of the gods. A towering achievement of 20th-century historical fiction, Renault's work illustrates how ancient myth can be reimagined with scholarly rigour and literary grace in equal measure. This Folio Society edition — introduced by the distinguished classical historian Robin Lane Fox and illustrated by Geoff Grandfield — elevates an already celebrated novel into a collector's treasure. Renault argues, through Theseus himself, that greatness is not granted but consecrated through sacrifice, and the question that haunts every page is as old as civilization itself: what does a king owe his people, and at what cost?
Author: Mary Renault
Format: Hardback
Published: 2016, The Folio Society
Genre: Historical fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Slipcase: Good
Pages: Good
From the labyrinthine corridors of Knossos to the blood-soaked arenas of Crete, The King Must Die plunges the reader into the ancient world of Theseus — warrior, king, and sacrifice — with a visceral immediacy that makes myth feel as urgent as breath. Mary Renault chronicles the legendary hero's journey not as mere folklore, but as a psychologically rich narrative of destiny and devotion: from his youth in Troizen, through his harrowing years as a bull-dancer in Crete, to the fateful moment when myth and mortality converge. Renault's prose is precise yet luminous, grounding the supernatural in the gritty, sensory realities of Bronze Age Greece, and presenting Theseus as a man shaped by ritual, faith, and the inexorable will of the gods. A towering achievement of 20th-century historical fiction, Renault's work illustrates how ancient myth can be reimagined with scholarly rigour and literary grace in equal measure. This Folio Society edition — introduced by the distinguished classical historian Robin Lane Fox and illustrated by Geoff Grandfield — elevates an already celebrated novel into a collector's treasure. Renault argues, through Theseus himself, that greatness is not granted but consecrated through sacrifice, and the question that haunts every page is as old as civilization itself: what does a king owe his people, and at what cost?