Fogo do Céu

Eileen Mary Challans was born in London in 1905, the eldest daughter of a doctor from the East End, the area of ​​the city where the writer spent her childhood. She studied at Oxford, taking a nursing course at Radcliffe Infirmary, an experience that would prove decisive for her life. She worked as a nurse, publishing her first novel in 1939, "Purposes of Love," under the literary pseudonym Mary Renault. With the work "Return to Night," published in 1946, she was awarded the Metro Goldwyn Mayer prize.
Major changes occur in Mary Renault's life with her departure for South Africa, where she takes up residence in the capital, Durban.
This author wrote several books about the life and times of Alexander the Great - "The Nature of Alexander" (1975), "The Alexander Trilogy," composed of the works "Fire From Heaven" (1969), "The Persian Boy" (1972), and "Funeral Games" (1981), which, curiously, was her last work. Her books delve into the less discussed aspects of history: "If the characters are alive, we should know how they make love."
In some of his books, the references to homosexuality are explicit, which would have led to changes in titles and constituted an obstacle to their publication in the USA. In 1961, Mary Renault became president of the PEN Club and, ten years later, was awarded by that organization. He died in 1983, at the age of seventy-eight, having been a controversial figure for his courage and anti-puritanism.