Cleopatra

Shakespeare, Dryden, and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Delacroix and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. But before her story was dramatized, it was lived. At only 18, the young woman known as Cleopatra was already one of history's most remarkable figures: the Queen of Egypt. A canny political strategist, a brilliant manager, a tough negotiator, and the most manipulative of lovers, Cleopatra ruled with a potent mix of intelligence, money, and charm. Although her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. A dangerous power struggle with her brother marked her early adulthood and set the tone for the rest of her life. A relationship with Caesar, forged while under siege in her palace, launched her into a deadly mix of romance and strategy: a pleasure cruise down the Nile followed, as did a trip to Rome, which Cleopatra fled after Caesar's brutal murder. A nine-year affair with Marc Antony marked her final years: together the lovers had three children and attempted to forge a new empire, before Augustus declared war on Cleopatra. Finally, Cleopatra's doomed last year brought to fruition a life rich with political and sexual intrigue, throwing together the men of her past: Antony, Herod, and Augustus.Pulitzer prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff accomplishes a feat that has eluded artists and writers for centuries--capturing the queen as she really was. Schiff weaves together sex and celebrity, empire and politics in a story that is as contemporary as it is ancient, capturing fully for the first time the operatic power of Cleopatra's life and reign.

Stacy Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupery, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and a fellow at the center for Scholars & Writers, and received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Schiff has contributed to The New Yorker and The New York Times, where she has been an op-ed columnist. She lives in New York City.