Cleopatra: A Life …by Stacy Schiff
The biography everyone is talking about…A must read!
“Superb…Cleopatra led an epic life, Schiff reanimates [Cleopatra] as a living, breathing woman: utterly extraordinary, to be sure, but recognizably human.” ( Los Angeles Times )
Stacy Schiff has managed to create a masterpiece: both a hugely readable portrait of a fascinating, unscrupulous and powerful woman, and a brilliant explanation of the politics that lay behind her actions….she writes with verve, tongue-in-cheek humor, and elegance….she has brought to life Cleopatra.” (The Daily Beast )
“[An] excellent, myth-busting biography….Schiff enters so completely into the time and place, especially the beauty and luxury of the ‘great metropolis’ of Alexandria, Cleopatra’s capital, describing it in almost cinematic detail….a vivid, provocative book.” (Washington Examiner )
“Captivating……Writing with verve and style and wit, Ms. Schiff recreates Cleopatra’s lavish courting of Antony (including one dinner in which there was a knee-deep expanse of roses (The New York Times )
“Exceptionally artful..Schiff’s beautiful writing hums with that tension…ambitious…a work of literature.” (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker )
Stacy Schiff, who is a brilliant writer, has created a book that is so well-written that it’s almost like a novel in its juicy literary flair…The city [of Alexandria] is evoked so brilliantly…Wonderful stuff.” (Tina Brown, The Daily Beast )
“Enthralling.” (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times )
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.
$17 Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (November 1, 2010) Amazon.com
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