Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination were family specialties. She had children by Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. With Antony she would attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled both their ends. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.
Cleopatra: A Life
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"Stacy Schiff has managed to create a masterpiece." (Michael Korda, The Daily Beast)
"[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)
"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)
"A swift, sympathetic life of one of history's most maligned and legendary women." (Kirkus)
"[A] dazzling, meticulous biography." (Caryn James, More)
"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)
"Hugely compelling...Schiff sifts through gauzy mythology to uncover a brilliant young woman." (Vogue )
"[An] excellent, myth-busting biography....No one will think of Cleopatra in quite the same way after reading this vivid, provocative book." (Washington Examiner)
"[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)
"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)
"A swift, sympathetic life of one of history's most maligned and legendary women." (Kirkus)
"[A] dazzling, meticulous biography." (Caryn James, More)
"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)
"Hugely compelling...Schiff sifts through gauzy mythology to uncover a brilliant young woman." (Vogue )
"[An] excellent, myth-busting biography....No one will think of Cleopatra in quite the same way after reading this vivid, provocative book." (Washington Examiner)
About the Author
Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, 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.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By Anastasia Prozorova
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I always wanted to believe that there was something more to Cleopatra than a mysterious personality that made men want to buy a night with her at the price of their lives. Stacy Schiff's book helps to see this woman in a completely different light. While still for the most part an interpretation, her book draws a portrait of Cleopatra that you've never seen before. Cleopatra's origin, her education, financial situation as well as the people she met shed light on why it was and still is so difficult to think of her as an important political figure rather than a mysterious woman...
Even if one comes to grasp the complexity of her character, the grandeur of her inventiveness and ambition, there still remains an unexplained fact: why did her projects end up so sad and tragic? Why did the whole world that she cherished so carefully turned its back on her at the end of her life? And how could she got outplayed by such a mediocre, compared to her, personality as Octavian? And what exactly, after his long reign of Rome, made Octavian come to consider Cleopatra's position, she so proudly occupied, as "dreadful" (p. 297)? It is hard or nearly impossible to understand what Cleopatra might have felt when she came to realize "she was to become the woman 'who destroyed the Egyptian monarchy'" (p. 302)...
While it's sad to be unable to understand what really happened and what drove her to commit suicide, I also want to believe that she was not only intelligent and calculating strategist. I don't think the tears she might have shed over the bodies of her children' s fathers were in anyway dramatic, in line with the tradition of Greek tragedies. I want to believe she was both the powerful queen and a vulnerable woman...
But then, if Aesop's lions were given an opportunity to believe in something (p. 298), we'd have a completely different review in here :))
Even if one comes to grasp the complexity of her character, the grandeur of her inventiveness and ambition, there still remains an unexplained fact: why did her projects end up so sad and tragic? Why did the whole world that she cherished so carefully turned its back on her at the end of her life? And how could she got outplayed by such a mediocre, compared to her, personality as Octavian? And what exactly, after his long reign of Rome, made Octavian come to consider Cleopatra's position, she so proudly occupied, as "dreadful" (p. 297)? It is hard or nearly impossible to understand what Cleopatra might have felt when she came to realize "she was to become the woman 'who destroyed the Egyptian monarchy'" (p. 302)...
While it's sad to be unable to understand what really happened and what drove her to commit suicide, I also want to believe that she was not only intelligent and calculating strategist. I don't think the tears she might have shed over the bodies of her children' s fathers were in anyway dramatic, in line with the tradition of Greek tragedies. I want to believe she was both the powerful queen and a vulnerable woman...
But then, if Aesop's lions were given an opportunity to believe in something (p. 298), we'd have a completely different review in here :))
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Schiff's Cleopatra is another triumph from the Pulitzer prize-winning author. Probably her most accessible book yet, it is a definitive portrait of the ubiquitous Egyptian Queen. Answering all your questions about what Cleopatra was really like, from her looks to her garments to her fabled city of Alexandria, Schiff beguiles us with the facts behind the Sphinx. From her relationships with Caesar and Marc Anthony to her famous ancestors, the Ptolemys, all is revealed. A must for the biography lover, amateur Egyptologist or history buff.
By Vlad Thelad
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Disentangling fact from fiction is rarely an easy task, let alone if you are dealing with history. Yet, therein resides Stacy Schiff's greatest achievement in tackling the life of one of the most fictionalized characters of all times. From Plutarch to Shakespeare and Elizabeth Taylor contributions to the myth of Cleopatra have been overly abundant. Schiff's navigates through all the sources rescuing the woman that really was, one that fully justifies our fascination with her on her own merits. On top of the gift that this revelation is in itself, Schiff writes wonderfully. Enjoy.
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3.4 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cleopatra: A Life
A fascinating account of a complex woman,this book goes past the popular melodramatic myths. I loved the accounts of the economics of the time, Cleopatra's education, the rights... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Long Branch
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Audio Book - The Print Edition Will Likely Become The Definitive...
This book gets off to a very slow start with the author explaining her research methods in excruciating detail, but once it gets going into the actual life of Cleopatra it becomes... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mark Anderson
1.0 out of 5 stars
cleopatra
The book is a hard read. too many charaters to keep track of. Need a high IQ to understand . Im able to just skim it to get interesting details of how they lived
Published on April 27 2011 by sharon
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