Biographical author and Pulitzer Prize winner Stacey Schiff has created a vivid portrait of the most controversial woman in world history: Cleopatra, the last ruler of Egypt. Her palace sparkled with precious stones and gold and was famous for political games. Cleopatra had close relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, but her personality turned out to be too tightly curtained with a romantic flair. The Egyptian queen was not in the shadow of these most prominent Romans of that time - the mistress of almost the entire Eastern Mediterranean, the last of the great kingdoms in the history of Egypt, was a strong ruler, capable of creating her own fleet, suppressing an uprising, maintaining the monetary exchange rate, and feeding the hungry. She spoke nine languages fluently and was an astute strategist and skilled negotiator. Her image was recreated by William Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and many of our contemporaries judge the appearance and character of the queen by her cinematic “double” - the brilliant Elizabeth Taylor. However, not all the details of Cleopatra’s dramatic life, not all facets of her complex character can be reflected through artistic means, and moreover, a lot of information has been lost or mythologized. Working professionally with classical sources, Stacy Schiff masterfully separates fact from fiction to reveal the true Cleopatra to the world. Rich in information and epic in scale, the book, translated into 30 languages, is a deep and carefully researched reconstruction of the life of this outstanding figure, and the insert with color illustrations makes her image even more visible. “To restore the personality of Cleopatra means to take care of the few that have come down to us facts... Recent research is shedding a whole new light on the history of women in Antiquity and Hellenistic Egypt." (Stacy Schiff)