About this audiobook
Harmachis is raised with the expectation that he will challenge Cleopatra and restore an older claim to the Egyptian throne. Entering the queen's circle places that inherited mission beside feelings and ambitions he has not learned to control. The certainty of a purpose formed in secrecy becomes less dependable when it encounters the person it has defined as an enemy.
H. Rider Haggard gives political intrigue the intimacy of a personal account. Religious authority, attraction and resentment influence the narrator's interpretation of events, while the splendour of court life conceals competing calculations. The story's historical atmosphere allows private decisions to acquire consequences that extend beyond an individual relationship.
The novel explores temptation, loyalty and the explanations people construct around a failure to act as they intended. Its combination of adventure and imagined antiquity invites attention to the distance between serving an ideal and becoming attached to the power that an ideal promises.
