The reading public knows Maurice Druon primarily from his saga “The Accursed Kings,” which reveals the dark secrets of the Middle Ages, and from the trilogy “The End of the People,” which tells about the backroom workings of European society in the first decades of the 20th century—about the decline of the dynasty of financiers and industrialists.
Alexander the Great, who lived for thirty-three years, was, by some priests on both sides of the Mediterranean, considered the son of Zeus-Ammon. The Egyptians crowned him as Pharaoh, and the Babylonians with a royal diadem. The Jews saw in him one of the rulers of the world, a harbinger of the Messiah. Some peoples of India embodied his features in the image of Buddha. The ancient Christians counted Alexander among the host of saints. Islam placed him among the pantheon of its heroes under the name Iskander. Alexander’s contemporaries constantly asked: “Was he a man or a god?” In his novel, Maurice Druon tries to recreate the image of the conqueror’s closest adviser, restore the favorite’s line of thought, and wrote memoirs that could have belonged to a great ruler.