Cleopatra

Under [Schiff’s] pen, the mirage of Cleopatra shimmers down the deserts of time and suddenly stands before us, in new and thrilling sharp focus … full of well researched context and much learned speculation – Jan Moir * Daily Mail *
We see a great queen painted in dazzling colours in the twilight of a dazzling kingdom … new life is breathed into an indisputably authentic icon * Sunday Times *
An inspired combination of carefully parsed texts, new research and pulse-quickening descriptive writing … a formidable and spellbinding achievement * Guardian *
[Schiff] writes elegantly and wittily … truly evocative * Independent *
Energetic, evocative … Schiff has produced a highly literary, imaginative, coherent narrative * Daily Telegraph *
A real page-turner bursting with intrigue and suspense * Easy Living *
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 * Vanity Fair *
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 * 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 * Elle *
Startling. Rarely have so distant a time and obscured a place come so powerfully to life. A great achievement * Newsweek *

Stacey Schiff is a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and The Times Literary Supplement. She has also received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2000 Schiff won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Vera Nabokov. She was also a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Saint-Exupery- A Biography about Antoine de Saint Exupery. In 2006 she received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in New York City and Edmonton, Alberta.

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