The Death of Napoleon (New York Review Books Classics)

As he bore a vague resemblance to the Emperor, the sailors on board the Hermann-Augustus Stoeffer had nicknamed him Napoleon. And so, for convenience, that is what we shall call him. Besides, he was Napoleon. . . . Napoleon has escaped from St. Helena, leaving a double behind him. Now disguised as the cabin hand Eugène Lenormand and enduring the mockery of the crew (Na­po­leon, they laughingly nickname the pudgy, hopelessly clumsy little man), he is on his way back to Europe, ready to make contact with the huge secret organization that will return him to power. But then the ship on which he sails is rerouted from Bordeaux to Antwerp. When Napoleon disembarks, he is on his own. He revisits the battlefield of Waterloo, now a tourist destination. He makes his way to Paris. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps conduct our puzzled hero deeper and deeper into the mystery of Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte escapes exile just before death in this quirky alternate history novel that reimagines the life of the great French emperor. “This comic tale of Napoleon’s imaginary yet all-too-human tribulations poses serious questions about the relationship of truth, history and imagination.” — The Wall Street Journal Napoleon has escaped from St. Helena, leaving a double behind him. Now disguised as the cabin hand Eugène Lenormand and enduring the mockery of the crew (Na­po­leon, they laughingly nickname the pudgy, hopelessly clumsy little man), he is on his way back to Europe, ready to make contact with the huge secret organization that will return him to power. But then the ship on which he sails is rerouted from Bordeaux to Antwerp. When Napoleon disembarks, he is on his own. He revisits the battlefield of Waterloo, now a tourist destination. He makes his way to Paris. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps conduct our puzzled hero deeper and deeper into the mystery of Napoleon. Adapted into Alan Taylor’s 2001 film The Emperor’s New Clothes , The Death of Napoleon is a smart alternative history for the Napoleon obsessed—as deep and compelling as it is quirky and fresh. ""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"-- Provided by publisher