Cleopatra

A Life

Stacy Schiff

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Paperback

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English

Little, Brown & Company
06 September 2011

Biography: general; Biography: royalty; History; Middle Eastern history; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Gender studies: women

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and -- after his murder -- three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.

By: Stacy Schiff
Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 206mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9780316001946
ISBN 10: 0316001945
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 06 September 2011
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Stacy Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupery, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. The recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in New York City.

Reviews for Cleopatra: A Life

[An] excellent, myth-busting biography....No one will think of Cleopatra in quite the same way after reading this vivid, provocative book. --Washington Examiner Hugely compelling...Schiff sifts through gauzy mythology to uncover a brilliant young woman. --Vogue Schiff excavates truth from myth with vivid eloquence, taking us back to a life in a time and place that was both 'an orgy of pillage and murder' and 'the Paris of the ancient world.' --Natasha Clark, Elle [A] dazzling, meticulous biography. --Caryn James, More A swift, sympathetic life of one of history's most maligned and legendary women. --Kirkus Captivating...Ms. Schiff strips away the accretions of myth that have built up around the Egyptian queen and plucks off the imaginative embroiderings of Shakespeare, Shaw and Elizabeth Taylor. In doing so, she gives us a cinematic portrait of a historical figure far more complex and compelling than any fictional creation, and a wide, panning, panoramic picture of her world. --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times [Schiff] writes against the fabulous grain...There are countless books about Cleopatra, but this one, I suspect, would have been one of her favorites. --Laura Miller, Salon.com Stacy Schiff has managed to create a masterpiece. --Michael Korda, The Daily Beast