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Shan Sa was born in Beijing and had her first poems, essays, and stories published at the age of eight. In 2001 her novel The Girl Who Played Go won the Goncourt Prize. The author of Empress, she is also a celebrated artist who has had prominent exhibitions in Paris and New York.
Alexander and Alestria: A Novel
by Shan Sa
eBook
$6.99
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ISBN-13:
9780061983108
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 10/06/2009
- Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 272
- Sales rank: 377,256
- File size: 605 KB
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re-creating the lives of two of the most intriguing rulers in history, Shan Sa brings us a novel filled with the sound of hooves, the whistle of arrows, blood, passion, and betrayal. The familiar figure of Alexander the Great comes to new life in this richly imagined tale, which entwines his historical legacy with a fantastic love affair set in a wartime between Western and Eastern civilizations.
Abused by his father, King Philip, who loved and hated his beauty; shadowed by his mother, the mystical and overbearing Queen Olympias; educated by Aristotle who wanted him to be a wise philosopher of Macedonia, Alexander develops a complex character. He becomes a brutal warrior, a pitiless strategist, and a poet longing for the world's wonders. Meanwhile, in the remote steppes of Siberia, an abandoned girl grows up among the wild mares, then adopted by the queen of the Amazons—the tribe of female warriors who dominates a wild world of snow and volcano. As a future queen, the young girl is trained to hate men and to fight against all invaders.
In the course of his great conquest of Asia, Alexander first meets the stunning Alestria on the battlefield. Surprised to find that his adversary is a woman, he is instantly smitten by the fierce queen. Dazzled by his strength, she decides to kidnap him and make him her "wife." At last, this legendary king—renowned for his beauty and love of men—has found his equal. And at last, this indomitable young woman has found a reason to leave her tribe. Their love, deeply passionate and problematic, evolves against an exotic backdrop of warfare and political turmoil, sweeps from antique Greece to Egypt, across the ancient Iraq and Iran, unto the mysterious kingdoms of India.
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Publishers Weekly
An epic fictional romance between Alexander the Great and an Amazon queen drives the latest from Shan Sa (Empress). As a boy, Sa's Alexander is abused by his father, King Philip of Macedonia. Alexander grows into a cruel and narcissistic youth with an unquenchable thirst for revenge. His political ambitions blossom under the tutelage of Aristotle, and after his father's assassination, Alexander sets off to conquer Greece, Persia and Egypt. When he meets Alestria, the young queen of the Amazons (a mythical tribe of nomadic, male-spurning female warriors from the eastern steppes), he has perhaps met his match in love and war. Told in the extravagant voices of Alexander and Alestria, and of Alestria's protector and confidante, Ania, there's little subtlety in this sweeping, heroic romance. But strewn amid the pageantry and clamor are fascinating details about Alexander's world and about the legendary Amazons, who, if they existed at all, might have been his contemporaries-and equals. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
Beijing-born novelist and painter Shan Sa (Empress, 2006, etc.) imagines the life of Alexander the Great in terms of his impassioned love affair with an Amazon warrior queen. Educated by Aristotle, Alexander wants to be a poet, but he follows in the footsteps of his father Philip of Macedonia. By the time Alexander rises to military preeminence, conquering Egypt and Babylon, he is the sun around which orbits a coterie of boyhood lovers/admirers. In this warrior society, romance and desire are reserved for other men while women are merely baby-makers. Alexander's first love, his schoolmate Hephaestion, remains loyal even after Alexander takes Darius of Babylon's former slave Bagoas as his new lover. Meanwhile on the Scythian steppes, the Amazons have evolved into a tribe of fierce women who live without men. One day Alexander finds himself in a one-on-one battle, unaware that his opponent is the Amazon queen Talestria. The two carry on their fight night and day until they recognize they are soul mates and decide to wed. After Alexander changes Talestria's name to Alestria, her servant Tania is horrified that her queen chooses love over war while Bagoas goes wild with jealousy. Alexander finds himself torn by extreme passions, his thirst for conquest overcome by his love for Alestria and his desire to bear a child with her. Despite Tania's efforts to keep Alestria sterile, she becomes pregnant. Tania is horrified as Alestria seems to wither away toward motherhood, but after the child is stillborn, Alestria demands that Alexander take her with him to the front. There Alexander suffers a fatal head wound but does not die immediately. Leaving behind a double in his place, he goes with Alestriato the Steppes, where she nurses him and where he has the chance to live without hatred. The power of the author's previous historical fiction came largely from a meticulous sense of historical detail missing in this artifice, which never comes to mythological or fictional life.
Washington Post
A dramatically imagined tale of a love affair between Alexander the Great and Alestria, queen of the Amazons. . . . Written with the unironic portentousness of an ancient myth, the novel nonetheless has modern and moving insights into such hot-button topics such as violence and gender.Booklist
Sa, author of Empress (2006), takes a huge historical leap in this entertaining fictional biography of Alexander the Great. . . . Romance, action, and intrigue combine to set the stage for a pageturning romp through alternate history.Finch's Quarterly Review Blog
Told in the extravagant voices of Alexander and Alestria, and of Alestria’s confidante Ania. . . . Strewn amid the pageantry and clamour are fascinating details about Alexander’s world and the legendary Amazons, who, if they existed at all, might have been his contemporaries—and equals.National Examiner
Imagine a romance between Alexander the great and the queen of the Amazons and you have Alexander and Alestria, by author Shan Sa.