by Saara El-Arifi
Ballantine, 2026. 352 pages. Historical
You know my name. But you do not know me. Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love's thrall. Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves. Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children. How willfully they refuse to concede that a woman could be powerful, strategic, and divinely blessed to rule. Death will silence me no longer. This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived.
I love when authors reimagine a historical figure in creative historical fiction, and this one reminded me of work by Jennifer Saint and Madeline Miller. In this work, El-Arifi has certainly interpreted multiple historical texts and presents a more accurate and authentic memoir-style biographical fiction of a powerful woman from classical antiquity, steeped in the mythology and lore of her time. But she does much more than that.
El-Arifi tells Cleopatra's story and makes her the center of it, rather than the historical patriarchal focus of her effect on the men around her. She dismantles the male gaze on this powerful queen by birthright and portrays her as the intelligent sovereign ruler she was. At the same time, El-Arifi avoids twisting Cleopatra into the mold of a feminist icon with a chip on her shoulder. Cleopatra shines as a complex, flawed character with ambition and mistakes, cruelty and loss, regrets and strategic prowess.
This work is a breath of fresh air in a world where women are constantly denigrated by men in positions of power and reduced to epithets like "seductress", "whore", and "bitch" by sexist political leaders. There's nothing in this character that panders to insecure misogynistic little boys who call themselves men, nor should there be.