Classicist Speaks About Writing Book on Alexander the Great

Classicist Speaks About Writing Book on Alexander the Great
Professor Kousser discusses studying and writing about Alexander the Great.

(Professor Kousser speaks about her book Alexander at the End of the World. | SOURCE: Author)

Rachel Kousser, Professor of Classics and Art History at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, spoke to students and alumni at Northen Auditorium about the writing of her book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great. During the event on March 4, she explained why she wrote the book, which was released last year, and described her creative process.

When working on the book, Kousser said she “spent a lot of time thrashing around. Trying to figure out what to say. And particularly what was new. What can I say about Alexander?”

“So often biographies of Alexander … focus on this kind of charismatic leader changing the course of empire and history,” she said. “I realized that my book needed to be instead about how the empire changed him.”

Kousser explained that her partner assisted her writing and research process. Her partner, Ilyon Woo, is the 2023 author of the nonfiction book Master Slave Husband Wife and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

The writing partnership worked well, Kousser said, because “[Ilyon] always loved fiction, and I was used to academic writing.” She explained that by sharing her writing drafts with Ilyon, she learned how to write a book that a broader audience can read.

Kousser specified that her college students’ interest in Alexander the Great inspired her to write the book. She said that their interest came from the fundamental story underlying Alexander: “a young man learning to navigate a world far more diverse and complicated than the one in which he grew up.” Her students came from all over the world, which made the story resonate with them.

To make her book on Alexander the Great unique, Kousser wanted to lean into her expertise in archaeology “because most books on Alexander are written based on the ancient literary sources.”

She used the story of Alexander burning the Greek city of Persepolis as an example, pulling up slides of archeological evidence from the site, referencing an argument among ancient historical scholars of whether the burning was “intentional or was it a dinner party that got out of hand.”

Historians looking at archeological evidence from the site concluded that the absence of all valuable items and the surviving heaps of strategically placed scorched flammable material reveals that the burning was intentional.

Her book focuses on the final years of Alexander’s life, but she also wanted to take an extra step to be different from other biographies of Alexander. She asked herself “What if Alexander is not the focus? Who would we see instead?”

Korusser’s book thus examines  the variety of figures involved in Alexander's life, many of whom have been glazed over in other biographies. Specifically, Krousser looks at “Alexander’s stillborn child” who “shows up in exactly one written source.” She wanted to talk more about this death and how it would have impacted Alexander and his wife at the time, Roxana.

Krousser’s talk ended with a question and answer session. When asked how her Greek art history background assisted her research, she responded that the knowledge and experience she had gained with her previous studies helped her in the archeological research she did for her book.

An audience member asked what Krousser’s next project was, to which she replied, “I am working on a book on feasts.” She described how, through her research of Alexander, she became interested in the significance surrounding feasts in the ancient world.

One of Kousser’s main takeaways from the experience was “the opportunity to use this biography of Alexander to illuminate many other lives.” She expressed satisfaction that she could contribute to the assortment of literature about Alexander by looking at Alexander in a new way.