Cleopatra

[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

The New York Times Book Review

[Schiff] writes elegantly and wittily ... truly evocative

Independent

A real page-turner bursting with intrigue and suspense

Easy Living

A swift, sympathetic life of one of history's most maligned and legendary women

Kirkus

An inspired combination of carefully parsed texts, new research and pulse-quickening descriptive writing ... a formidable and spellbinding achievement

Guardian

Captivating ... 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. A cinematic portrait of a historical figure far more complex and compelling than any fictional creation. Writing with verve and style and wit, Ms. Schiff recreates Cleopatra's lavish courting of Antony and his extravagant offerings to her

The New York Times

Energetic, evocative ... Schiff has produced a highly literary, imaginative, coherent narrative

Daily Telegraph

Hugely compelling ... Schiff sifts through gauzy mythology to uncover a brilliant young woman

Vogue

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

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

Los Angeles Times

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

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, 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

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

Wall Street Journal