Mary Renault · 1972 · overland

Mary Renault's 1972 novel, the middle book of her Alexander trilogy, narrated by the eunuch Bagoas. Sold into slavery as a child and made a favourite of Darius, he is handed to Alexander after Darius is murdered - and follows him for seven years to India and back, telling the conquest from the losing side's point of view.

1. 1
   Ecbatana

   Darius flees east from Gaugamela and is murdered by his own satraps on the road. Bagoas, hiding under a collapsed tent, is offered to the conqueror by one of the traitors as the price of his own life - and it works.

2. 2
   Bactra

   North-east through the Hindu Kush after Bessus, into country where the army starves and freezes in the same week - and Bagoas, a courtier and no soldier, learns to travel with an army that never stops.

3. 3
   Maracanda

   Samarkand, and the worst nights of the book: the conspiracy of the pages, and Alexander killing Kleitos at dinner with a spear and then refusing food for three days afterwards.

4. 4
   The Hydaspes

   India, elephants, and Poros - and past the river the army finally refuses to go further east. Alexander sulks in his tent for two days and then turns south, which he never forgives them for.

5. 5
   The Gedrosian desert

   The march that kills more of his men than any battle: sixty days of waterless country, the baggage abandoned and the sick left behind. Bagoas walks it, and afterwards the army calls for Alexander to kiss him, and he does.

6. 6
   Susa

   The mass weddings, where Alexander marries Persians to Macedonians by the hundred and takes two Persian wives himself - a policy his own officers hate, and which Bagoas understands better than they do.

7. 7
   Persepolis

   He gives orders to rebuild the palace he burned when he was twenty-five, which is as close as Alexander comes to admitting an error - and Hephaistion dies at Ecbatana, and he does not recover from it.

8. 8
   Babylon

   Into the city against every omen, planning Arabia next, and dead of a fever within a fortnight at thirty-two - and Bagoas at the bedside while the generals begin arguing in the next room over a body nobody has embalmed.