Published: 6 June 2013
Hardback, Short Royal HB
156x200mm, 400 pages
ISBN: 9781847087034
£25.00
Alexandria
The Last Nights of Cleopatra
Other Editions
Paperback
Published: 2 January 2014
Paperback, B Format
129x198mm, 400 pages
ISBN: 9781847087041
£9.99
Ebook Available
Overview
When Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, finds himself stranded in Alexandria in the winter of 2010 after his flight to South Africa has been cancelled, he sets out to explore a nation on the brink of revolution. Guided by two native Egyptians, Stothard traces his own life-long interest in the history of Cleopatra, and his repeated failure to write the book about her that he had always wanted to.
In Alexandria, part memoir and part travel literature, Stothard was the sights and sounds of the ancient city to reconnect with the formative experiences of his childhood education, and his literary career. Melancholy and sometimes humorous, Alexandria offers a first-hand glimpse into the fracturing police state of Hosni Mubarak, before the uprising in Tahir Square changed everything.
About the author
Peter Stothard is the Editor of the TLS and the author of two books of diaries, Thirty Days (2003) and On the Spartacus Road (2010). He is a classicist who has spent most of his life as a political and literary journalist. From 1992 to 2002 he was the Editor of The Times. In 2012 he was chairman of the judges for the Man Booker Prize. He was knighted in 2003. His latest book, Alexandria, was published by Granta Books in 2013. More about the author
Reviews
‘[Alexandria] exerts a powerful attraction. It is as good an evocation of one of the world's most absorbing cities as one could imagine. It is the depth and quality of Stothard's insights into himself that will make me go back to this book again and again’ John Simpson
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Reviews
‘[A] quirky travelogue... compelling’ Claire Harman
‘[It is] with great skill [that] the various elements are knotted together to produce a very eerie sense of moving back and forth through place and time... Wonderful, surprising [and] uplifting’ John Preston
‘A fine travel book. Peter Stothard found inspiration in Alexandria and writes of its place in his heart and his obsession with Cleopatra’ Melissa Katsoulis
‘A heady mixture of ancient history, modern reportage and personal confession, it touches on the literary sensibility like the effect of a drug’ Giles Foden
‘A virtuosic genre-buster’
‘An absorbing mix of history, biography and memoir... Superb’ Ian Critchley
‘For readers open to a genre-defying journey through history and Egypt led by a reflective, impassioned tour guide with a gift for precise and emotional prose, Alexandria is a rich experience’
‘His discursive story of brooding on Cleopatra is fascinating, a book full of surprises, humour, information and reflections; it's a walk through the rich estate that is Peter Stothard's mind’ Allan Massie
‘It's a love letter to England and a rumination on the nature of history and politics’ Ahdaf Soueif
‘Like the tales it has to tell, this book's genre slips attractively in and out of focus... Consistently bewitching and very moving too’ Boyd Tonkin
‘Others can praise Stothard's journalistic precision but what impressed me more is the Classical self-knowledge... [Alexandria is] shot through with a supremely humane intelligence’ Stuart Kelly
‘Some episode are in the same comic league [as] Jonathan Coe's The Rotters Club... Stothard enduringly evokes the fragility of life and memory’ Tom Payne
‘Stothard has brought back from his quixotic North African jaunt the materials of a very fine book indeed’ John Sutherland
‘Stothard marshals his material superbly to create an absorbing mix of history, biography and memoir’ Ian Critchley
‘Subtle, haunting and complex... Stothard, like Cavafy, takes his place in the venerable tradition of Alexandrian elegy’ Tom Holland
‘Subtle, mournful... Stothard, whose last book dwelled on his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer, has written an elegy for himself’ James McConnachie
‘The elegant unfolding of his themes into shape is akin to literary origami’ Iain Finlayson
‘Thoroughly engrossing’ Daisy Dunn
‘Touching and funny in the finest tradition of English letters’ Ahdaf Souef
‘Wonderful’ Nicholas Lezard
