The Memoirs of Cleopatra, a Novel

Cleopatra was not just a tragic gold-digger: she was a great leader and a life long scholar of languages. Truly in love with the men in her life, she always felt responsible for the welfare of her people, and made great strides in raising the level of everyday living for them. She also loved the greatest and most powerful men of her time, and tried to combine the desires of her heart and her mind with disastrous results.

This is an excellent (and very large) book, told from an unusual perspective: as if it were the written journal of Cleopatra herself. As pointed out by the author, when a country loses a war, whose point of view ends up being the one that goes down in the history books? The victor's, of course. Most of our knowledge of the story of Cleopatra was handed down through the centuries by the Romans. But what would that story have been, had Cleopatra lived to tell it? The tale is just that, of course, a tale. A very clever and believable version, however! The queen comes across as being the earliest, and truest, of feminists: she was extremely wise and well-educated for her years, much more so even than many men of her time, but she never let anyone forget that she was a woman.