Cleopatra: A Life

Stacy Schiff

Little, Brown, Nov 1, 2010 - Biography & Autobiography

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 protégé. 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.

What people are saying

Review: Cleopatra: A Life

User Review  - Katie - Goodreads

There's a lot to like here. Schiff is a lively, engrossing writer who chose her subject wisely. Is it possible NOT to find Cleopatra fascinating? What kept me from falling in love, though, was that I ...

Review: Cleopatra: A Life

User Review  - Lex - Goodreads

A book that does its best to piece together what it can about Cleopatra. At times riveting to read, but in areas where verifiable information is lacking, it reads more like a college thesis. Still ...

About the author

Stacy Schiff is a Pulitzer-Prize winning American nonfiction author. She was born on October 26, 1961 in Adams, Massachusetts. She earned her B.A. degree from Williams College in 1982. She was a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster until 1990. In 2000 she won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Vera Nabokov, wife of author Vladimir Nabokov. She was also a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Saint-Exupéry: A Biography about Antoine de Saint Exupéry. Schiff's most recent biography, Cleopatra: A Life, was published by Little Brown in November of 2010 and reached the New York Times Bestseller List.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Cleopatra: A Life
• Author: Stacy Schiff
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Little, Brown, 2010
• ISBN: 0316121800, 9780316121804
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical; Biography & Autobiography / Women