Book review: A queen reclaims her voice in Saara El-Arifi’s historical epic ‘Cleopatra’
JEDDAH: In “Cleopatra,” British author Saara El-Arifi — who has Sudanese and Ghanaian heritage and spent her early years in Abu Dhabi before moving to the UK — sets out to reclaim the Egyptian monarch’s voice through a first-person narrative styled as a memoir.
“This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived,” Cleopatra declares to the reader early on in this historical novel, rejecting sensationalist accounts of her dramatic demise that have dominated mainstream perceptions of the last active pharaoh of Egypt.
The Roman chronicles that have shaped Cleopatra’s legacy were written by political victors who had a motive to justify the messy civil war that is portrayed in the novel.
While the Romans cast her as a foreign seductress or a witch who ensnared their generals into political alliances, Shakespeare immortalized Cleopatra as a tragic lover and Hollywood gave her Elizabeth Taylor’s kohl-rimmed eyes and little substance.
