Edison Marshall
The Conqueror
Doubleday, c1962 (no ISBN)
 

The Conqueror is the only novel-length first-person narrative told from Alexander's point of view, of which I am aware.  It is, thus, a potentially intriguing approach.  Unfortunately, it fails to deliver.

The book's chief problem is not with history.  There are historical errors, but not as wide-ranging or profound as those found in some novels on our list (albeit it was to this book's advantage that I began it after reading P.C. Doherty's A Murder in Macedon [Anna Apostolou]).  Nonetheless, Marshall shows some familiarity with both the geography and history of Greece and Macedonia.  He has clearly read the primary sources, as well as secondary source biographies and histories.  Even so, we find Aristotle's science too advanced, an overemphasis of the importance of the sword versus the spear, a mention of saddles, and chess, and a blonde Sogdianian Roxanne!  But some of the changes he has made (Alexander greets the Persian envoys when sixteen instead of as a child), seem to have been done for a narrative purpose, not from ignorance.  So, while far from perfect, historical aspects are passable.

The book's chief problem is that it's boring.  I simply could not finish it -- and this from someone who will at least try any piece of
fiction which features Alexander!

While Marshall's choice of a first person had the potential to be both interesting and unique, he simply doesn't have either the quirkiness of narrative voice or sufficient profundity of observation to maintain such an intensely personal point of view.  John Irving he isn't -- or even Marguerite Yourcenar.  Part of his difficulty seems to be a misplaced attempt to sound Greek by stiff formality.  The result is nearly unreadable narrative.*  The language chokes on itself.  And one cannot muster interest in, much less sympathy for, Marshall's Alexander.

Writing Alexander's story from Alexander's point of view would never be an easy task for any author.  But it deserves to be done again, and by someone with more literary talent (and more insight into the human condition) than Marshall provides.

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*Gene Wolfe, in Solder of the Mist and Soldier of Arete, managed a remarkably Herodotian tone.  He succeeds at what Marshall attempted -- but Wolfe is an author of entirely different calibre.