The dust of antiquity settles differently when a woman brushes it aside herself. In Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi, the last Pharaoh of Egypt tears away centuries of male-authored mythology to reclaim her narrative—not as history’s footnote to Julius Caesar or Marcus Antonius, but as the central force of her own extraordinary existence.
A Curse Dressed as Blessing
El-Arifi’s boldest creative choice transforms Cleopatra’s story from biography into something far more ambitious: a meditation on immortality and the price of legend. Here, Cleopatra bears Isis’s mark—a three-stepped throne etched upon her neck—bestowing divine gifts that should empower but instead entrap. The author, who holds a master’s degree specializing in Cleopatra’s cultural impact on Black women, understands that myth-making cuts both ways. When Cleopatra performs a staged healing at a banquet, dissolving a pearl in vinegar to “resurrect” her handmaiden Charmion, she creates the very legend that will outlive truth. El-Arifi captures this paradox exquisitely: every divine performance chains Cleopatra tighter to public expectation, until the woman drowns beneath the goddess.
The immortality curse—revealed gradually through the narrative—elevates Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi beyond conventional historical fantasy. Cleopatra cannot die permanently; each death returns her to the moment before her asp-bite “suicide,” forcing her to witness her children’s fates across centuries. This framework transforms familiar historical beats into something achingly personal. When Octavian’s propaganda machine labels her “fatale monstrum,” we understand she’s endured millennia of such vilification, watching herself caricatured in paintings, plays, and films—”polyester and plastic—an indignity of the worst kind.”
The Architecture of Power
El-Arifi structures her narrative in three acts—”The Witch,” “The Whore,” “The Villain”—each title a slur history has weaponized against powerful women. Yet within these sections, Cleopatra reveals herself as strategist, mother, scholar, and survivor. The author’s prose shifts register brilliantly: tender when describing Caesarion’s birth, sharp when dissecting Roman political maneuvering, philosophical when confronting loss.
The relationship with Caesar receives nuanced treatment. Rather than the clichéd seductress-and-general dynamic, El-Arifi presents two brilliant tacticians recognizing their match. Their carpet-delivery meeting becomes less about spectacle and more about Cleopatra’s desperation to reclaim her throne from brother-husband Ptolemy XIII and the eunuch Pothinus. When Caesar eventually bows before her—”time and time again,” as she notes—it’s acknowledgment of equal partnership, not conquest. His assassination devastates not because she’s lost a protector, but because she’s lost the one Roman who saw her as more than exotic prize.
Marcus Antonius emerges as Cleopatra’s truest complement, though their love story avoids romanticism’s sugar-coating. El-Arifi captures the messiness of their decades-long relationship: the jealousy when he marries Octavia, the passionate reconciliations, the political calculations entangled with genuine affection. Their private wedding ceremony, where they dress as Isis and Dionysus, reveals how they mythologize themselves—performing godhood even in intimacy. When Antonius eventually dies in her arms, having stabbed himself with the ivory dagger she once wore at her throat, the tragedy lands with devastating force because we’ve witnessed both the magnificence and mundanity of their bond.
Maternal Crucible
Where Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi truly distinguishes itself is in its unflinching examination of motherhood under impossible circumstances. Cleopatra loves her children—Caesarion, twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and youngest Ptolemy Philadelphus—with fierce protectiveness, yet she’s “not motherly” by nature. The author resists sentimentalizing maternal instinct, instead showing how Cleopatra learns tenderness as necessary skill. When she stitches Charmion’s slashed cheek after an assassination attempt, her medical training battles against trembling hands. Later, marking Caesarion with prophetic ink becomes an act of both love and violation—ensuring his legitimacy while literally scarring him with political necessity.
The immortality curse’s cruelest dimension is forcing Cleopatra to outlive her children across centuries. In the epilogue, she tracks down Selene, now Queen of Mauretania, but cannot reveal herself for fear of endangering her daughter. Later, she learns both twins died of illness—deaths she might have prevented had she possessed the courage to approach. This guilt becomes her eternal companion. El-Arifi captures the specific horror of surviving your children with prose that cuts: “the torment of my own children’s death is the only grief I will never recover from.”
When Myth Meets Flesh
The novel’s greatest strength lies in how El-Arifi balances grand mythology with intimate human moments. Between political maneuvering and divine interventions, Cleopatra plays senet with Charmion, argues with her siblings, vomits from seasickness and pregnancy, feels envy curdle in her stomach when lovers marry other women. She’s calculating enough to stage elaborate deceptions, vulnerable enough to weep alone in garden pools when Antonius’s absence aches. The author’s prose mirrors this duality—soaring into poetic heights (“I am the Nile of your body and the surging waters of your heart”) before grounding itself in visceral specificity (the “brackish char of eels being cooked over fire”).
El-Arifi’s reimagining draws from her academic expertise while refusing to be constrained by it. She acknowledges in her author’s note that “no one can say for certainty who her mother was, or who she loved,” framing the novel as memory rather than history. This liberates the narrative to explore emotional truth over factual precision. When Cleopatra describes watching herself misrepresented across millennia—from Shakespeare to modern film—the meta-commentary never overwhelms the story itself. Instead, it adds layers: we’re reading Cleopatra’s correction of the historical record, her final attempt to be understood on her own terms.
Shadows in the Narrative
Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi occasionally stumbles under the weight of its own ambition. The pacing suffers in the middle sections, where political maneuvering sometimes dulls the emotional urgency. Some readers may find the immortality framework introduced too late in the narrative, though this mirrors Cleopatra’s own gradual understanding of her curse. The novel’s length—spanning decades and eventually centuries—means certain relationships receive less development than they merit. Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s sister, appears compellingly in early chapters but fades too quickly from the story. Similarly, the supporting cast of courtiers and advisors beyond Charmion can blur together.
The balance between historical detail and mythological invention won’t satisfy every reader. Those seeking strict historical accuracy will bristle at divine interventions and fantastical elements, while fantasy enthusiasts might wish for more explicit magic earlier in the narrative. El-Arifi walks this line deliberately, but not everyone will appreciate the hybrid approach. Additionally, some of the novel’s philosophical asides—while beautifully written—occasionally interrupt narrative momentum, particularly in the final third.
A Legacy Reclaimed
What elevates Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi is its refusal to choose between complexity and accessibility. This is literary historical fantasy that invites scholarly analysis while remaining emotionally immediate. El-Arifi has crafted something rare: a Cleopatra who transcends both the seductress stereotype and the overcorrected “actually, she was just politically savvy” backlash. This Cleopatra is politician and lover, scholar and performer, calculating strategist and grieving mother. She’s witch, whore, and villain precisely because she was woman enough to be all things—and powerful enough that history needed to diminish her into digestible caricature.
For readers of El-Arifi’s previous works—the ambitious The Final Strife trilogy and the enchanting Faebound series—this represents a maturation of her already considerable talents. Where those novels showcased her world-building prowess and political intrigue, Cleopatra demonstrates mastery of voice and restraint. The first-person narration never wavers; Cleopatra remains utterly herself across decades, continents, and millennia.
The Resonance of Ruins
As Cleopatra herself notes in these pages, she exists “in the dust between tomes,” speaking across centuries to anyone willing to listen. El-Arifi has given her that voice—not the sanitized whisper historians prefer, but the full-throated declaration of a woman who ruled nations, birthed legends, and refuses to be reduced to cautionary tale or romantic fantasy.
Similar Reads:
- Hera by Jennifer Saint (Greek mythology retold through female perspective)
- Circe by Madeline Miller (immortal woman reclaiming her narrative)
- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (mythological romance with historical grounding)
- Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin (classical figure speaks her own story)
- The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (women’s voices in ancient warfare)
The novel closes with Cleopatra still living, still watching, still being misunderstood and misrepresented. It’s a haunting conclusion to a story that began with her insistence: “You know my name, but you do not know me.” By the final page, we do know her—not completely, for she remains abundant and undefinable—but intimately enough to understand why history needed to reduce her to manageable myth. Some women are simply too large for their legends. El-Arifi reminds us that Cleopatra was always one of them.