- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Grove Press (Oct 17 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802117538
- ISBN-13: 978-0802117533
- Product Dimensions: 21.7 x 14.8 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,260,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Booklist
Mexican author Boullosa plays with the life and myth of Cleopatra in her third novel to be published in the U.S., following Leaving Tabasco (2001) and They're Cows, We're Pigs (1997). Drawing on the writings of several ancient authors, including Sophocles, Cicero, and Virgil, Boullosa presents a Cleopatra different from the traditional, historical portrait, which came to us via the Romans, who had much reason to dislike her. Boullosa offers three possibilities, leaving us to decide which defines her best. Was she the lover of Marc Antony, too distraught to remain alive after his death? Or the young girl who disguised herself and went to live with a band of pirates in order to escape from her royal duties? Or a woman who learned the art of love and war from Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons, and her tribe of women warriors? Those wanting a straightforward fictional biography of Cleopatra should look to Margaret George's Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997), but readers open to an imaginative, sensual, and poetic peek into the life of this fascinating woman will enjoy Boullosa's visions. Nancy Pearl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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First Sentence
"I am dead, my king," I wrote to you, meaning that defeat had overtaken me, even before that battle at Actium. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
"I am dead, my king," I wrote to you, meaning that defeat had overtaken me, even before that battle at Actium. Read the first page
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5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprised I'm the first to review this book!, Feb 11 2010
By M. Mistretta "book nerd." - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Cleopatra Dismounts (Hardcover)
First, apologies if there are typos I don't catch. The S key on my keyboard has been acting up lately.CLEOPATRA DISMOUNTS is a fine and ethereal work of writing, walking a line somewhere between straightforward historical fiction and the finest of literary experimentation. It's a short and easy to read novel, if you appreciate literary fiction. If you are a greater fan of a much more plain-faced historical, this may not be the book for you.
Boullosa (trans. Hargreaves) paints vivid, startling pictures with words. This is a book that looks into the emotional life of the last Pharaoh of Egypt, showing three possible alternate Cleopatras. At the beginning of the novel, we understand that Cleopatra is dying in her lover's arms, and thus, the alternate memories she reflects upon can be taken as hallucinatory memories created by an expiring brain. But they might also reflect the Cleopatra that wanted to exist, that may have existed if things had gone just a little differently. The text is further filtered through the perspective of a scribe translating Cleopatra's biography, as written by his master, a historian who knew Cleopatra personally. Thus, the entire story is seen through a strange veil -- a scribe putting his own spin on a biographer's work about a woman's dying "memories." Cleopatra is hardly laid in her tomb, and already her legend is running away with itself.
Boullosa's prose is intoxicating and real, and her three imagined lives of Cleopatra are poignant. Definitely worth reading for any fan of historical or literary fiction.
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