The Ends of the Earth

Alexander defeats the last great Persian army, enters Babylon and takes possession of the ceremonial capitals of the Achaemenid Empire. The destruction of Persepolis and the death of Darius remove the enemy against whom the expedition was launched, but Alexander refuses to stop. He pursues resistance into Central Asia, marries Roxana and demands that Macedonians and Persians serve a single imperial court.

The advance continues across the Hindu Kush and into India, where new armies, unfamiliar terrain and war elephants test men already exhausted by years of campaigning. As mutiny and grief fracture Alexander's circle, his plan to unite the conquered peoples becomes inseparable from personal absolutism. The novel follows the final campaigns, the costly return west and the collapse of a destiny that no successor can easily inherit.