Read This!: Cleopatra

By Stacy Schiff

First book for the book challenge!

I have been waiting out Cleopatra in paperback pretty much since it was published and it arrived under the Christmas tree at my Dad's house pour moi this holiday season.  Yeah!

I was excited to read this book so I jumped pretty much right in after receiving it.

Cleopatra is a biography of... wait for it...  Cleopatra!  Because so much relating to the last queen of Egypt has been destroyed and history is written by the victors (aka not Cleopatra), it is hard to know a lot about her that is truthful.  Schiff delves into the historical works of the time as well as what would be the logical reasons for Cleopatra's actions based on her family history, her role as queen, and life in Alexandria to create a biography that is a fair representation of her life.

Going in, I didn't know much about Cleopatra other than she was an Egyptian queen, had a love affair with Mark Antony, and killed herself presumably by an asp bite.  I have since learned not only a lot about Cleopatra but the world during her life.

I found parts of this book really engrossing particularly about the histories of the Ptolemys and the glimpses into life in Egypt.  The writing, though at times overly descriptive, was fairly easy to follow and didn't get bogged down.  I do, however, have to confess that when Schiff got into the Roman politics between Octavian and Mark Antony, my eyes glazed over a bit.  Other people liked this book as well because it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Like I mentioned in my first sentence, this counts as a book challenge book: Set in Africa.  I picked that as a challenge because I was thinking that was an area of the world I don't read much about.  And then I realized I owned this biography.  I will confess that a good deal of the action takes place around the Mediterranean not in Egypt but since Cleopatra was an Egyptian queen who lived mostly in Alexandria which is located in Africa, I am counting it.