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Cleopatra: A Life
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Cleopatra: A Life Hardback - 2010

by Stacy Schiff

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Though her life spanned fewer than 40 years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world.

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From the publisher

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 protg. 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.

Details

  • Title Cleopatra: A Life
  • Author Stacy Schiff
  • Binding Hardback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 384
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Little Brown and Company, New York
  • Publication date 2010-11-01
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Deckle Edges, Dust Cover, Illustrated, Index, Maps, Price on Product - Canadian
  • ISBN 9780316001922 / 0316001929
  • Weight 1.42 lbs (0.64 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.49 x 6.31 x 1.24 in (24.10 x 16.03 x 3.15 cm)
  • Reading level 1070
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: Ancient (To 499 A.D.)
    • Cultural Region: Middle Eastern
    • Cultural Region: North Africa
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Category Biography / Autobiography
  • Library of Congress subjects Cleopatra, Queens - Egypt
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2010006988
  • Dewey Decimal Code B

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 10/15/2010, Page 16
  • Choice, 04/01/2011, Page 0
  • Entertainment Weekly, 12/24/2010, Page 118
  • Kirkus Best Books, 12/15/2010, Page 13
  • Kirkus Reviews, 09/15/2010, Page 0
  • Library Journal, 09/01/2010, Page 116
  • Library Journal Prepub Alert, 06/15/2010, Page 47
  • New York Review of Books, 01/13/2011, Page 10
  • New York Times Book Review, 11/07/2010, Page 1
  • Newsweek, 11/01/2010, Page 53
  • NY Times Notable Bks of Year, 12/05/2010, Page 29
  • People Weekly, 11/22/2010, Page 46
  • Publishers Weekly, 09/06/2010, Page 0

About the author

Stacy Schiff is the author of Vra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award; Cleopatra: A Life, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography; and The Witches: Salem, 1692.

Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Government, she lives in New York City.

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