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For her first novel since her widely acclaimed Sword at Sunset, Rosemary Sutcliff has turned from the Britain of King Arthur's time to the classical Greek world of warring city-states. The Flowers of Adonis is a novel of the Peloponnesian War, a magnificent historical narrative that tells the life of Alkibiades, the glorious Athenian military hero and one of the most paradoxical figures in Greek history.
A great general of Athens, Alkibiades was a man so gifted, brave, and intelligent that lesser men feared and envied him. Implicated in a sacrilegious mockery of the Eleusinian mysteries, he was put on trial and condemned to death. But he escaped and fled to Sparta—a move which thrust him into war against his own country.
This is the starting point of an unforgettable adventure that takes the daring and intrepid Alkibiades from Sparta to Persia and finally, after the overthrow of the government that condemned him, back to Athens. It is a story rich in its depiction of battles at sea, but throughout it is dominated by its endlessly fascinating protagonist. Portraying him in different lights through the shifting focus of those around him, the author has written a carefully researched novel in the distinguished tradition of Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine.
—from the dust jacket
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