Well, it seems as though Cleopatra has finally met her match and her name is Stacy Schiff. In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me enlighten you. Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, 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.
And to put the icing on the cake, yesterday, the New York Times came out with their list of the Top Ten Best Books of 2010 and Cleopatra was right there!
As Schiff said in a recent interview:
“Cleopatra was born a goddess, became a queen at 18 and at the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands. Having inherited a kingdom in decline, Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose it all.”
She continued:
“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. I wanted to make her approachable but also strip away the incredible gossamer myth floating around her all the time. After Eve and Mary, Cleopatra may be the most written about woman ever.”
I think it’s fabulous when such a well known, respected writer takes on a person whose life has been completely misunderstood and gives them their due. Certainly, we all think we know a lot about Cleopatra; she looks like Elizabeth Taylor; wore an incredible amount of eye liner and seduced a lot of really famous men–Julius Caesar and Marc Antony for starters. And oh yeah, she committed suicide by bringing a poisonous asp (snake) into her bed. Truth is, only the barest of facts are known about her and from an historical perspective, her life can be proven in only the tiniest of bits and pieces. Schiff has uncovered every one and the result is a definitive biography on a truly fascinating woman. -Norma
Cleopatra: Queen of the World
Well, it seems as though Cleopatra has finally met her match and her name is Stacy Schiff. In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me enlighten you. Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, 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.
And to put the icing on the cake, yesterday, The New York Times came out with their list of the Top Ten Best Books of 2010 and Cleopatra was right there!
As Schiff said in a recent interview,
“Cleopatra was born a goddess, became a queen at 18 and at the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands. Having inherited a kingdom in decline, Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose it all.”
She continued:
“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. I wanted to make her approachable but also strip away the incredible gossamer myth floating around her all the time.
After Eve and Mary, Cleopatra may be the most written about woman ever.”
I think it’s fabulous when such a well known, respected writer takes on a person whose life has been completely mis-told and gives them their due. Certainly, we all think we know a lot about Cleopatra; she looks like Elizabeth Taylor; wore an incredible amount of eye liner and seduced a lot of really famous men… Julius Caesar and Marc Antony for starters. And oh yeah, she committed suicide by bringing a poisonous asp (snake) into her bed. Truth is, only the barest of facts are known about her and from an historical perspective, her life can be proven in only the tiniest of bits and pieces. Schiff has uncovered every one and the result is a definitive biography on a truly fascinating woman.
This would make a great Christmas gift!
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Stacy Schiff
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