Tuesday, February 14, 2012

March Notfiction Book Discussions

How does one write a biography of a woman from whom, at best, only one written word survives? Whose story we know from sources who never knew her? Whose political rivals shaped her story for their own benefit? A woman whom we think we know today from salacious depictions in film and literature?

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff acknowledges that Cleopatra "seems the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors," yet Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Schiff takes on the daunting task of discovering who she really was. Schiff notes that "[t]o restore Cleopatra is as much to salvage the few facts as to peel away the encrusted myth and the hoary propaganda." Schiff returns to the classical sources, carefully separating fact from fiction, helping us understand the varied perspectives of Cleopatra's biographers over the centuries, emancipating the Egyptian queen from the stereotype of seductress and restoring the true story of her political acumen in the glittering and treacherous world of Ptolemaic Egypt.

According to biographer Joseph J. Ellis, "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."

To view images of Cleopatra as she has been imagined through the ages, read Goddess, Queen, Celebrity: 11 Iconic Images of Cleopatra and Why They're Wrong, an essay with photographs by Stacy Schiff in Huffington Post (2010) and All Hail Cleopatra !, a review with photographs by Michael Korda in The Daily Beast (2010).

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 6, at Main Library at 6:30 p.m.; Thursday, March 22, at West Ashley Branch Library at 11:00 a.m.; and here on the blog.