Beds in the East

Beds in the East is the third novel in Anthony Burgess's Malayan Trilogy The Long Day Wanes. It was published in 1959.
The title is taken from a line spoken by Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, act 2, scene 6: "The beds i' the east are soft; and thanks to you,/That call'd me timelier than my purpose hither;/For I have gain'd by 't."

Who was Cleopatra? Who is Cleopatra? Viewed as both goddess and monster even in her own lifetime, she has become through the ages saint and sinner, heroine and victim, femme fatale and star-crossed lover, black and white. A protean figure, Cleopatra defies categorization.

This beautifully illustrated new biography of Cleopatra draws on literary, archaeological, and art historical evidence to paint an intimate and compelling portrait of the most famous Queen of Egypt.
• Deconstructs the image of Cleopatra to uncover the complex historical figure behind the myth
• Examines Greek, Roman, and Egyptian representations of Cleopatra
• Considers how she was viewed by her contemporaries and how she presented herself
• Incorporates the author’s recent field work at a temple of Cleopatra in Alexandria
• Beautifully illustrated with over 40 images

For more than 2,000 years, plays, poetry, movies, and television have portrayed Cleopatra as an ambitious woman who used her beauty to seduce powerful men like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony in a ruthless attempt to increase her own power and wealth. But is this the real Cleopatra or one invented by male historians anxious to discredit an intelligent, competent woman who was the last great pharaoh of Egypt? In "Cleopatra", the true story reveals her to be a woman who used her great intelligence, imagination, personality, and indomitable drive in a tragic attempt to restore Egypt to the greatness it had known under the great pharaohs of old.