The Mask of Apollo (50 page)

In 1947, Renault received her first major award: Her novel
Return to Night
(1946) won an MGM prize. With the $150,000 of award money, she and Mullard moved to South Africa, never to return to England again. Renault revived her love of ancient Greek history and began to write her novels of Greece, including
The Last of the Wine
(1956) and
The Charioteer
(1953), which is still considered the first British novel that includes unconcealed homosexual love.

Renault’s in-depth depictions of Greece led many readers to believe she had spent a great deal of time there, but during her lifetime, she actually only visited the Aegean twice. Following
The Last of the Wine
and inspired by a replica of a Cretan fresco at a British museum, Renault wrote
The King Must Die
(1958) and its sequel,
The Bull from the Sea
(1962).

The democratic ideals of ancient Greece encouraged Renault to join the Black Sash, a women’s movement that fought against apartheid in South Africa. Renault was also heavily involved in the literary community, where she believed all people should be afforded equal standard and opportunity, and was the honorary chair of the Cape Town branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization.

Renault passed away in Cape Town on December 13, 1983.

Renault in 1940.

Renault and Julie Mullard on board the
Cairo
in 1948, on their way to South Africa, where they settled in Durban.

Renault in a Black Sash protest in 1955. She was among the first to join this women’s movement against apartheid.

Renault and Michael Atkinson installing her cast of the Roman statue of the Apollo Belvedere in the garden of Delos, Camps Bay, in the late 1970s.

Renault working in her “Swiss Bank” study with Mandy and Coco, the dogs.

Renault and Mullard walking the dogs on the beach at Camps Bay in 1982.

Delos, Greece, with a view over the beach at Camps Bay.

Portrait of Renault in 1982.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The translation of Plato’s epitaph to Dion on
page v
is reprinted from Dudley Fitts, ed.,
Poems from the Greek Anthology
, by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. 1938, 1941, © 1956 by New Directions.

The quotations from Euripides’ The Trojan Women on
pages 8
and
9
are reprinted from
Euripedes, Vol. III of The Complete Greek Tragedies
, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds., by permission of the University of Chicago Press, © 1956 by the University of Chicago.

Copyright © 1966 by Mary Renault

Cover design by Biel Parklee

978-1-4804-3291-8

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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