The Golden Mean

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist for the Giller Prize and Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction The startlingly original first novel--now the basis for the forthcoming Netflix series Alexander--by award-winning writer Annabel Lyon reimagining one of history's most intriguing relationships: that between legendary philosopher Aristotle and his most famous pupil, the young Alexander the Great.** 342 BC: Aristotle is reluctant to set aside his own ambitions in order to tutor Alexander, the rebellious son of his boyhood friend Philip of Macedon. But the philosopher soon comes to realize that teaching this charming, surprising, sometimes horrifying teenager--heir to the Macedonian throne, forced onto the battlefield before his time--is a necessity amid the ever more sinister intrigues of Philip's court. Told in the brilliantly rendered voice of Aristotle--keenly intelligent, often darkly funny--The Golden Mean brings ancient Greece to vivid life through the story of this remarkable friendship between two towering figures--innovator and conqueror--whose views of the world still resonate today. Exploring this fabled time and place, Annabel Lyon tells her story in the earthy, frank, and perceptive voice of Aristotle himself. With sensual and muscular prose, she explores how Aristotle’s genius touched the boy who would conquer the known world. And she reveals how we still live with the ghosts of both men.