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"It is a beautiful pairing--the most alluring and elusive womanin recorded history, and one of the most gifted biographers of ourtime. Style, like leadership, is difficult to define, but we knowit when we see it. We see it here on every page." (Joseph J.Ellis, author of Founding Brothers and First Family:Abigail and John )

"Great historians can make the discovery of the real story moreexciting than the romantic myth. Stacy Schiff, a great historian aswell as a wonderful writer, peels away the layers to reveal thetrue Cleopatra--a much more interesting woman than the Hollywoodversion, and, as it turns out, a formidable queen after all."(Evan Thomas, author of The War Lovers )

"Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winner, sets the gold standard forall biographers, and her latest, Cleopatra, is a feast--amouth-watering feast." (Kitty Kelley, author of Oprah: ABiography )

"What dazzles us in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra are not thealluring mythologies about the evasive queen, but the astonishingif rare historical facts that Schiff has meticulously and lovinglyexcavated, linking one to the other like precious pieces of anancient artifact. Cleopatra becomes 'real' as do the major (andminor) characters at her side. In language that is filled withinsights and yet is seductive, lithe, and eloquent, Schiff offersnot just Cleopatra's story but the story of an amazing era, onethat has vanished but still affects us, questioning the way we lookat myth, history and ourselves." (Azar Nafisi, author ofReading Lolita in Tehran and Things I've Been SilentAbout )

"An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and wehave a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing andilluminating, this new biography will endure." (Jon Meacham,author of American Lion )

"It is a beautiful pairing--the most alluring and elusive woman
in recorded history, and one of the most gifted biographers of our
time. Style, like leadership, is difficult to define, but we know
it when we see it. We see it here on every page." (Joseph J.
Ellis, author of Founding Brothers and First Family:
Abigail and John ) 
 
"Great historians can make the discovery of the real story more
exciting than the romantic myth. Stacy Schiff, a great historian as
well as a wonderful writer, peels away the layers to reveal the
true Cleopatra--a much more interesting woman than the Hollywood
version, and, as it turns out, a formidable queen after all."
(Evan Thomas, author of The War Lovers ) 
 
"Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winner, sets the gold standard for
all biographers, and her latest, Cleopatra, is a feast--a
mouth-watering feast." (Kitty Kelley, author of Oprah: A
Biography ) 
 
"What dazzles us in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra are not the
alluring mythologies about the evasive queen, but the astonishing
if rare historical facts that Schiff has meticulously and lovingly
excavated, linking one to the other like precious pieces of an
ancient artifact. Cleopatra becomes 'real' as do the major (and
minor) characters at her side. In language that is filled with
insights and yet is seductive, lithe, and eloquent, Schiff offers
not just Cleopatra's story but the story of an amazing era, one
that has vanished but still affects us, questioning the way we look
at myth, history and ourselves." (Azar Nafisi, author of
Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I've Been Silent
About ) 
 
"An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we
have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and
illuminating, this new biography will endure." (Jon Meacham,
author of American Lion ) 
 
"Cleopatra is buried under centuries of lies, and Stacy Schiff
calls on her considerable powers to bring her back to life for us.
With wit, clarity, and grace, Schiff has done what only the best
writers can do: she has made the world new, again." (Tracy
Kidder, author of Strength in What Remains ) 
 
"Even if forced to at gunpoint, Stacy Schiff would be incapable of
writing a dull page or a lame sentence. Here she trains her
satirical eye and sterling erudition on Cleopatra. Schiff's
luminous prose evokes the ancient world with vivid splendor,
whether it be the cosmopolitan charms of Alexandria or the
murderous feuds of Rome. Her portraits of Julius Caesar and Mark
Antony are fresh and provocative. Best of all, Cleopatra emerges as
much more than the voluptuous seductress of legend and comes across
as a shrewd, cunning, and highly competent monarch who knew how to
thrive in a Mediterranean world of savage politics." (Ron
Chernow, author of Alexander Hamilton and Washington: A
Life ) 
 
"This is an astonishing, scrupulously researched, meticulously
assembled retelling of one of the world's most famous lives--and it
will become a classic." (Simon Winchester, author of The Man
Who Loved China ) 
 
"A Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer presents a swift, sympathetic
life of one of history's most maligned and legendary
women....[Cleopatra] took into her bed some of the most powerful
men in history (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony), maneuvered through a
male world with intelligence, skill and sanguinary brutality, met
and failed to charm Herod and bore children to both Caesar and
Antony.... Born in 69 BCE, Cleopatra entered a family for whom the
word internecine was surely invented--killing family
members standing in the way was routine, and Cleopatra was not
above it.... Successfully dissipating all the perfume, Schiff finds
a remarkably complex woman--brutal and loving, dependent and
independent, immensely strong but finally vulnerable."
(Kirkus (starred review) ) 
 
"[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. And though we
all know the outcome, Schiff's account of Cleopatra's and Antony's
desperate efforts to manipulate their triumphant enemy, Octavian,
make for tragic, page-turning reading. No one will think of
Cleopatra in quite the same way after reading this vivid,
provocative book." (Publishers Weekly (starred
review) ) 
 
"Stacy Schiff's meticulous research, the depth and deftness of her
portrayal, have given us a Cleopatra far richer and more satisfying
than the myths and fantasies that we have mistaken for true
nourishment. This Cleopatra is an invaluable contribution to
our understanding of the history and lives of women." (Mary
Gordon, author of Circling My Mother ) 
 
"Schiff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Véra Nabokov, set
out to the extract the real Cleopatra from the mythic figure....
Schiff's learning is immense, but worn lightly and with an assured
grasp of human nature." (Cullen Murphy, Vanity Fair
) 
 
"Refreshingly, [Cleopatra] looks beyond the myths and into
the realities of Cleo's audacious empire-building." (Good
Housekeeping ) 
 
"In [Stacy Schiff's] terrific new biography of history's favorite
sex-crazed, power-mad hussy, called simply Cleopatra, Schiff
tosses out centuries' worth of envy, misogyny, and plain old snark
to unearth the brilliant Macedonian ruler and restore the golden
luster of Cleopatra VII's reign in Egypt....As gripping as the
story of [Cleopatra's] 22-year reign over Egypt is (especially once
Mark Antony arrives in his breastplate), the greatest pleasure
comes from reading Schiff's lavishly detailed scenes of banquets
(think roasted peacocks and storks), processions of elephants in
golden slippers, and political intrigue. The Cleopatra who emerges
had a talent for making an impression, a genius for diplomacy, and
more flat-out Girl Power per pound than any woman before or since."
(Kimberly Cutter, Marie Claire ) 
 
"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." (Natasha Clark, Elle ) 
 
"Startling. Rarely have so distant a time and obscured a place come
so powerfully to life. It is a great achievement. It is also a
provocative one. Faced with the perplexing question of how to write
about a person when the evidence is sketchy and often misleading,
Schiff has hit on an ingenious solution. She has written a
biography in negative, describing the outlines of what she cannot
know by brilliantly coloring around the queen." (Louisa Thomas,
Newsweek ) 
 
"Hugely compelling...Schiff sifts through gauzy mythology to
uncover a brilliant young woman." (Vogue ) 
 
"Stacy Schiff's dazzling, meticulous biography, Cleopatra,
reclaims the queen from myth and gives her back her brain."
(Caryn James, More ) 
 
"Schiff brings alive not only the personalities but the ambience of
the gilded Hellenistic Middle East and still-crude Rome. Her
writing beautifully evokes Cleopatra's stupendous capital
Alexandria." (Anne Bartlett, Book Page ) 
 
"[Cleopatra's] first biographers never met her, and she
deliberately hid her real self behind vulgar display. A cautious
writer would never consider her as a subject. Stacy Schiff,
however, has risen to the bait, with deserved confidence
....Schiff's rendering of [Alexandria] is so juicy and cinematic it
leaves one with the sense of having visited a hopped-up ancient Las
Vegas, with a busy harbor and a really good library....It's
dizzying to contemplate the thicket of prejudices, personalities
and propaganda Schiff penetrated to reconstruct a woman whose
style, ambition and audacity make her a subject worthy of her
latest biographer. After all, Stacy Schiff's writing is
distinguished by those very same virtues." (Kathryn Harrison,
The New York Times Book Review ) 
 
"[Schiff] handles the politics of the ancient world from 48 to 30
BC with the immediacy she might bring to a book about the Clinton
or Bush administrations...Schiff's enthralling book has its own
feminist agenda: to save this 'capable, clear-eyed sovereign' from
the slanders of history...More than a biography, Schiff has written
a Fodor's of the ancient world, with stops in its most famous
cities." (Craig Seligman, Bloomberg News) 
 
"A rollicking good read... Schiff shares the talents that made her
subject such a standout in her time: wit, rhetorical skill and keen
intelligence." (Joanne B. Mulcahy, The Sunday
Oregonian ) 
 
"Captivating...Ms. Schiff strips away the accretions of myth that
have built up around the Egyptian queen and plucks off the
imaginative embroiderings of Shakespeare, Shaw and Elizabeth
Taylor. In doing so, she gives us a cinematic portrait of a
historical figure far more complex and compelling than any
fictional creation, and a wide, panning, panoramic picture of her
world....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 and some of the
attendees received not gift baskets but furniture and horses decked
out in silver-plated trappings) and his even more extravagant
offerings to her (including the library of Pergamum and a host of
territories which gave her dominion over Cyprus, portions of Crete
and all but two cities of the thriving Phoenician coast). For that
matter, Ms. Schiff even manages to make us see afresh famous scenes
like Antony's painful death after his defeat at the hands of
Octavian, and Cleopatra's subsequent suicide." (Michiko
Kakutani, The New York Times ) 
 
"Stacy Schiff...writes against the fabulous grain....For the
discerning history buff, here is a biography of the most notorious
woman of all time that's worldly, shrewd and indefatigable in its
pursuit of the truth...There are countless books about Cleopatra,
but this one, I suspect, would have been one of her favorites."
(Laura Miller, Salon.com ) 
 
"Stacy Schiff draws a portrait worthy of her subject's own wit and
learning...Ms. Schiff manages to tell Cleopatra's story with a
balance of the tragic and the hilarious...[and] does a rare thing:
She gives us a book we'd miss if it didn't exist." (Sarah Ruden,
The Wall Street Journal ) 
 
"[Cleopatra] sizzles with passion, intrigue... Mixing
contemporary sources, beautiful writing and psychological insight,
Schiff makes us empathize with the heroine of this tale of togas,
territorial conquest and hot love." (Deirdre Donahue, USA
Today ) 
 
"If you think two millennia of dusty research and hoary legend have
told us all we need to know about this woman, you're in for a
surprise...[Schiff] has dug through the earliest sources on
Cleopatra, sorted through myth and misapprehension, tossed out the
chaff of gossip, and delivered up a spirited life...Schiff has a
magpie's eye for detail...it is a great, glorious spree of a
story." (Marie Arana, The Washington Post ) 
 
"Schiff rises to the challenge and creates an engaging biography by
relentlessly stitching together the pieces of her subject's broader
life and making connections between them...reveals through colorful
details and clearly written prose." (Ralph Eubanks,
NPR.org ) 
 
"Schiff uses her amazing de*ive powers to make the infamous
queen's story even juicier....Cleopatra fascinates."
(Redbook ) 
 
"[Stacy Schiff's] book is a masterpiece of lightly-worn learning
and scintillating deduction. It's thrillingly, brazenly written. It
rises in a single movement above the whole sea of Cleopatra
biographies and gives us in some ways an entirely new woman for a
new century....[Schiff] is the liveliest of narrators, going over
every detail not only with an array of sources at her
fingertips...but with an alert eye for the real, human story
lurking under the ancient narratives. She cheerfully relates the
propaganda of the era, but she is not fooled by it. She knows that
virtually every detail she's relating could be false or falsified,
but she relates them with a knowing exuberance anyway, since
they're all we have....Reading her for page after enormously fun
page, we're ashamed at how often we've been lectured into
forgetting that history is first and always a story of people. This
is a book full of living, savage, thriving, laughing, dying
people." (Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly
) 
 
"Superb...Cleopatra led an epic life, and Schiff captures its sweep
and scope in a vigorous narrative aimed at the general reader yet
firmly anchored in modern scholarship. The author's greatest
strengths remain the lucid intelligence and subtle analysis of
personality...Schiff reanimates [Cleopatra] as a living, breathing
woman: utterly extraordinary, to be sure, but recognizably human."
(Wendy Smith, Los Angeles Times ) 
 
"In Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff is authoritative and
confident...Schiff makes a convincing case against the traditional,
male-chauvinist take on Cleopatra as a power-hungry seductress.
It's a stance that puts her at odds with 2,000 years' worth of
Cleopatra chronicles, and she's aware of it." (Mary Pols,
TIME Magazine ) 
 
"With a clear eye, great courage, and formidable erudition, Stacy
Schiff has succeeded in removing...many misconceptions...and
replacing them with the fascinating portrait of an altogether more
substantial woman...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." (Michael Korda, 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....No one will
think of Cleopatra in quite the same way after reading this vivid,
provocative book." (Washington Examiner ) 
 
"The most compelling biography of the year....Miss Schiff can
really write....persuasive and entertaining." (Liz Smith,
Wowowow.com ) 
 
"Exceptionally artful...Imaginative attunement with a subject,
however, does not have to compromise a vigilant biographer's
critical detachment, and Schiff's beautiful writing hums with that
tension...ambitious...It is an edifice of speculation and
conjecture--like every Cleopatra ever written. But unlike
nearly all of them it is a work of literature." (Judith Thurman,
The New Yorker ) 
 
"Cleopatra is a fascinating woman and always has been. 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
) 
 
"Stacy Schiff has created a masterpiece and firmly cemented a new
Cleopatra in our minds--one who had enough sex appeal to sleep with
the two most powerful men in the world, Julius Caesar and Mark
Antony....eminently readable." (Stephen Sondheim, The Daily
Beast )

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内容简介

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life themost intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, thelast queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold,but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above allelse, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingeniousnegotiator.

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.

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作者简介

Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of 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. The recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in New York City.

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