So adept at mythologizing herself, often using ostentatious pageantry to project her persona to the Egyptian people as the incarnation of the goddess Isis, Cleopatra in the end became a victim of her own propaganda. Over the centuries, poets, historians, and biographers—mostly males—all but glossed over her great intelligence and leadership skills as queen of Egypt, focusing instead on her sexuality and liaisons with the towering Roman leaders of her time (notably Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony) and portraying her 22-year reign “as little more than a sustained striptease.”
Stripping away the encrusted myth around Cleopatra is what Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff had set for herself in writing
Cleopatra: A Life (Little, Brown & Company, 368 pages). “I wanted to take a story we have completely mangled—few as effectively as Cleopatra—and make this both a factual book and a readable book for people who are not trained historians,” Schiff told the
Philadelphia Inquirer. “I wanted to make her approachable but also strip away the incredible gossamer myth floating around her all the time.”
It’s a task that critics agree Schiff had done exceedingly well, among them
Elle Magazine’s Natasha Clark, who says in her review of
Cleopatra: A Life: “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.’ Schiff’s portrayal brings to life a charismatic figure who spoke eight languages fluently, and for 22 years, until her legendarily gruesome death, ruled a glittering city-state of astronomical wealth.”
Released only last November 1,
Cleopatra: A Life has now been named by
The New York Times as one of the 10 best nonfiction books for 2010.
Read an excerpt from Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life in The New York Times now!Read Kathryn Harrison’s review of Cleopatra: A Life in The New York Times now!Read John Timpane’s review of Cleopatra: A Life in the Philadelphia Inquirer now! THIS PARTICULAR WEBPAGE NO LONGER AVAILABLEABOUT THE AUTHOR:Stacy Schiff won the Pulitzer Prize for
Véra, a biography of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, wife of the internationally acclaimed novelist who wrote
Lolita, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for
Saint-Exupéry, a biography of the French aviator and writer who is best remembered for his novella
The Little Prince. Schiff’s book
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America won both 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, and is a recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
RELATED READING:Read "Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, Egypt’s most popular ancient Egyptian ruler," in AncientEgyptOnline now!
