Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
I knew next to nothing about Cleopatra going into this one. I know she lead Egypt at some point and had an affair with Marc Antony and that all of this caused a Mediterranean kerfuffle in the time of the Roman Empire. But I couldn’t say what her power was or what era she lived in or any of that. I couldn’t even guess, not even taking material from the wildly inaccurate plays and movies about her as I’ve seen none. So it felt good […]
A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark
I knew Cannonballers had enjoyed a book about djinn by an author named Clark, but I didn’t pay enough attention and accidentally started at book 2. It was all still easy to follow and I liked it, but I think there are a few parts that would make more sense if I knew the history of Fatma and Siti. Agent Fatma works for a magical Ministry where magic is real and djinns live peacefully alongside humans, after being let out into the world by al-Jahiz. […]
Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs by Barbara Mertz
Barbara Mertz was an Egyptologist and author; in addition to this non-fiction entry she has a mystery series under the pen name Elizabeth Peters, featuring an intrepid female Egyptologist crime solver. Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphics is a quick historical romp through ancient Egypt, beginning at the beginning (the first pharaoh, Narmer, he of the stone palette trumpeting the unification of upper and lower Egypt that is taken as the usual start of ancient Egyptian history), through to Egypt becoming a vassal Roman state (fall of […]
When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney
Kara Cooney is an Egyptologist and National Geographic explorer with an interest in women’s roles in ancient Egypt. This book is a taster tour of the rise and fall of 6 of Egypt’s female rulers, the most famous of which are Cleopatra, Hatshepsut and Nefertiti. Before I read this I was passingly familiar with these three but had never heard of the others she features (Merneith, Neferusobek and Tawosret). The timelines covered are broad- Merneith was the first of the six and she ruled in […]
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
I was pretty excited to finally pick up and find the time to read A Master of Djinn. I had previously been delighted by P. Djèlí Clark’s alternative, magical steampunk 1910s Cairo. The setting is just so damned fun. The novellas I had read before Master of Djinn—The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and A Dead Djinn in Cairo— were masterful in how they managed to be so descriptive for short form works, so was I curious as to how he would adapt an entire novel into this […]
Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth by Francine Prose
Francine Prose tells the story of Cleopatra (VII Philopater, if you want to be specific), her entanglement with the Roman Empire, and how she has become distorted in cultural depictions after her death. In a way, I am reading this book in preparation – I’ve got the reading of a retelling of Cleopatra’s life set in space (!) coming up, and I figured that I’d appreciate it more if I gave myself a better grounding of the historical subject matter first. Also, I’ve always found […]
