The death of Napoleon
By: Simon Leys ; translated from the French by Patricia Clancy and Simon Leys
Contributors: Clancy, P. A., translator
Series: New York Review Books classics; New York Review Books classics
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 130
ISBN-13: 9781590178423
Subjects: Fiction
Work titles: Mort de Napoléon
Description: ""Ladies and gentlemen, alas! The Emperor is dead." The news from St. Helena goes out across Europe, but in fact Napoleon has not died. By means of an ingenious escape, he has returned to the Continent, leaving an impersonator on St. Helena, and it is this double who has unexpectedly and very problematically passed away. Traveling incognito, the emperor experiences a series of bizarre adventures that bring him face-to-face with the myth of Napoleon as it is disconcertingly played out in everyday life. After a visit to Waterloo and a near arrest at the French border, he eventually arrives in Paris, where he falls in with some veteran Bonapartists and visits an asylum where most of the inmates are laboring under the mistaken impression that they are he. Will Napoleon ever recapture his true identity? Who, in the end, is he, now that "the Emperor is dead"? Simon Leys's truculent, delightful fable poses these and other questions in a rare work of fiction that is continually surprising and effervescent"--
Notes: "First published in French in 1986 as La Mort de Napoléon by Hermann, Éditeurs des Sciences et des arts. Published in Australia by Black Inc.."--Title page verso.