“[Renault’s] historical novels . . . are among the finest ever written.” —The Washington Post Book World
(New York—May 7, 2013)— Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, announced today that it will digitally publish and market a major selection of titles by renowned novelist and historian Mary Renault. The author is best known for her works set in Ancient Greece, with their vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato, and Alexander the Great, among others. In addition, Open Road will publish Renault’s post–Word War II novels, many of which have been out of print for years.
According to the New York Times, “Renault masters a lyrical style, meticulous and probing, and introduces us into a world of emotions so delicate and private that the reader often feels like an intruder.”
The Sunday Times has called her work “brilliant and brutal,” adding that “she has retained her unnerving genius for making the remote past live without diminishing its remoteness and alien glitter.”
Says Open Road Publisher Tina Pohlman, “Mary Renault’s rich body of work, from her historical novels of Ancient Greece to her more contemporary love stories, has captivated a large, passionate audience for decades, and we are just as passionate about preserving her legacy by introducing her oeuvre to a new generation of readers in E.”
In both her historical novels and her landmark post–World War II novel, The Charioteer, Renault’s sympathetic treatment of love between men has won her a wide gay readership. In “The American Boy,” Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent and deeply moving article in the the New Yorker, he notes, “[Renault] had two discrete and enthusiastic audiences . . . . The first, and larger, consisted of admirers of her historical fiction. The second consisted of gay men.”
Open Road will first launch Renault’s historical novels and her classic post–World War II novel, The Charioteer, as well as her biography of Alexander the Great. These titles will be available in September:
- The Charioteer
- Fire from Heaven
- The Persian Boy
- The King Must Die
- The Bull from the Sea
- Funeral Games
- The Mask of Apollo
- The Praise Singer
- The Last of the Wine
- The Nature of Alexander(biography)
The following post–World War II novels will be released in Spring 2014:
- The Friendly Young Ladies
- Kind Are Her Answers
- Purposes of Love
- The North Face
- Return to Night
The publication and promotion of the rediscovered post–World War II novels, in addition to the relaunch of the historical titles, adds to Open Road’s list of iconic works by literary authors from around the world.
About Mary Renault
Born in London as Eileen Mary Challans in 1905 and educated at the University of Oxford, Mary Renault trained as a nurse at Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary. It was there that she met her lifelong partner, fellow nurse Julie Mullard. After completing her training, Renault wrote her first novel, Purposes of Love, in 1937. In 1948, after her novel Return to Night won an MGM prize worth $150,000, she and Mullard immigrated to South Africa. There, Renault wrote the historical novels that would define her career. In 2006, Renault was the subject of a BBC 4 documentary, and her books, many of which remain in print on both sides of the Atlantic, are often sought after for radio and dramatic interpretation. In 2010, Fire From Heaven was shortlisted for the 1970 Lost Booker prize.
