Cleopatra Escape Down the Nile by Caroline Corby - Reviewed by Michael Adamache

Cleopatra Escape Down the Nile is a fictional history novel written by Caroline Corby that follows along young Cleopatra and her adventures  during her preteen ages.

The story takes place in Alexandria Egypt in 32 B.C. The novel is about young Cleopatra in her teen years. What happens in the book is Cleopatra’s mother dies who is Queen Selene, but her father the king is very shocked about. Her father leaves for Rome so he can create allies who are fighting against Emperor Caesar. After he leaves Cleopatra’s sister Berenike takes the throne. One day her other sister requests her presences outside the castle walls. But that day Cleopatra finds out that she was dead. She suspected that Berenike was the one killed her sister so Cleopatra thought she was next. In case of safety she flees to the northern parts of Egypt for protection.  

Cleopatra has to deal with much trouble in the book. Most of her time she is having to face sexism. Or what I mean is battling against nature due to  the gender discrimination to women. At the time women who were not wealthy or royal didn’t learn how to read or write. So when Cleopatra hid with the peasant family, she had to pretend like she had no education and had deal with all of the derogatory comments from her roommate Pepe. Pepe was one of the boys she had to share her house with. Pepe didn’t know Cleopatras secret so he was always putting Cleopatra down because she was a girl. But as soon as Cleopatra had to admit her secret Pepe started treating her differently. So the stereotype will change very quickly due to your social ranking or gender.

I found that Caroline Corby successfully caught my attention throughout most of the book. I enjoyed reading this book very much. She presented the whole idea of a young ancient Egyptian princess very well and would catch the readers attention any day. The author presented the knowledge in the book clearly and I learned much more about ancient Egypt than I already did after reading this book.

What I learned from this book was a moral that is very important in my perspective. Women’s rights where not presented long ago and they were not very familiar back then. Women not being accepted in a society because of the fact they can’t read or write changed a lot back then. I am surprised that this would be the moral of the book for me. The story was much more different then I expected it to be and I enjoyed it very much.