{"product_id":"2026200018262-secondhand-cleopatra","title":"Cleopatra","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Excellent\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Very good\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Signed\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe was a queen, a scholar, a strategist, and the most powerful woman in the ancient world — and in Cleopatra, Natasha Solomons resurrects her in all her dangerous, dazzling complexity. Set against the opulent, treacherous backdrop of Ptolemaic Egypt and the warring Roman Republic, the novel chronicles the life of Cleopatra VII from her earliest days in the royal court of Alexandria to her legendary alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, placing the reader at the beating heart of an empire on the edge of transformation. Solomons writes with visceral immediacy, grounding grand historical spectacle in intimate human drama — the fierce love of a mother, the cold calculus of a ruler, and the unyielding will of a woman who refused to be anyone's trophy.\n\nDrawing on rich historical research, Solomons dismantles centuries of myth and misrepresentation to present a Cleopatra who is neither seductress nor victim, but a formidably intelligent monarch navigating a world designed to destroy her. Her prose is at once lush and precise, capturing the sensory world of antiquity — its incense-thick temples, marble halls, and blood-soaked battlefields — while keeping the emotional truth of her protagonist razor-sharp. Praised as vivid and thrilling, this is historical fiction at its most commanding, and it leaves one burning question smouldering long after the final page: what might history have looked like had she won?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51070626955483,"sku":"2026200018262-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/dc9e43b4-6c00-4fe1-b314-e06673b54909.png?v=1794188312","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200018262-secondhand-cleopatra","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}