"Ladies and gentlemen, alas! The Emperor is dead." The news 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 which 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 near ...
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"Ladies and gentlemen, alas! The Emperor is dead." The news 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 which 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 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.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good jacket. First am. Very good or better in a Very good plus dustwrapper; Book and dustwrapper show slight bumping of corners/ends. Please Note: This book has been transferred to Between the Covers from another database and might not be described to our usual standards. Please inquire for more detailed condition information.
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New York. 1992. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0374135657. Translated from the French by Patricia Clancy & The Author. 130 pages. hardcover. Jacket art-Detail from 'War: The Exile and the Rock Limpet (1842) by J.M.W. Turner. Jacket design by Cybthia Krupat. keywords: Napoleon Literature France Translated. FROM THE PUBLISHER-Napoleon has escaped St. Helena, but the impersonator he left in his place has unexpectedly passed away. Travelling incognito through the Continent, he experiences a series of bizarrre adventures that bring him face to face with the myth of Napoleon as it is disconcertingly played out in everyday life. Awarded the London Indepedent Foreign Fiction Award in 1991, this truculent, delightful fable tells of Napoleon's series of bizarre adventures which bring him face-to-face with his own myth, as it disconcertingly plays out his everyday life. A rare work of fiction that continually surprises. inventory #17344.