The Death of Napoleon

by Simon Leys

Other authorsSimon Leys (Translator), Patricia Clancy (Translator)
Paperback, 2015

Status

Available

Call number

843.914

Collection

Publication

NYRB Classics (2015), Edition: Reissue, 144 pages

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"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Libraryish2
Although this book is very short, it more than compensates for in style. Amusing, thought provoking and ultimately enigmatic, this work is one of my favourites. The premise that Napoleon came to regret his role in shaping history, and that he could have been humbled through his relationships with
Show More
some of the 'ordinary' people whose lives were so affected by his actions is startling and also moving. As he begins to slip into obscurity, he seems to become more human, more vulnerable and begins to recognise that death is the ultimate leveller.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stbalbach
The Death of Napoleon, a novella by Belgian author Simon Leys (pseudonym), won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1992. On the surface it is a comic alternative history that imagines Napoleon escaping from prison only to live out his days as a Everyman selling fruit on the streets of Paris.
Show More
This is a bourgeois fantasy of the Emperor getting his comeuppance making us non-Bonapartists giggle with egalitarian delight. But it's a deeper novel than that, also about identity and celebrity, specifically the horror of losing ones identity and existing in a living death. The loss of identity is obvious in the form of Napoleon himself, and living death can be found throughout: the conspiracy of collaborators who can not communicate because the founder has died but the conspiracy goes on existing, the rotting fruit Napoleon must sell, the old man at the battlefield, the 20 crazy Napoleons, Napoleon who fears telling anyone his identity for fear of being committed, etc.. Likewise, living death is at the center of the cult of celebrity- think Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley who were subsumed by their own image - they may be technically alive but their true selves are long dead. Living death is at the core of post-colonialism, those who are subjugated by more powerful forces - African slaves for example - loose their identity, thus it is no accident the black shipboard cook and the former celebrity Napoleon find common bond, thus the novels final sentence. This common connection between high and low, between the marginalized and the celebrity, is well done and once again appealing to the Democratic bourgeois in us all (Bonapartists excluded once again, of course!).
Show Less
LibraryThing member Limelite
Delightful speculative fiction or "what-if" alternative history presuming Napoleon had escaped St. Helena. In this novella he journeys by boat to his supposed rendezvous in Bordeaux, only to have the merchant who owns the vessel redirect the ship to Brussels and so, the highly planned plot to
Show More
return him to Paris and to power is interrupted.

But Napoleon is nothing if not enterprising. He attempts to complete his journey on his own, traveling, as he believes, incognito. He takes a tourist's day off day trip to Waterloo and is mortified at the blatant exploitation of his name and the zealotry of entrepreneurs who have him sleeping in beds he’s never seen. He is infuriated to find so-called battlefield veterans acting as guides who never heard a shot fired anywhere much less on these fields of war.

In his persona as Eugène, Napoleon gets to hear the peoples’ assessment of him and to engage in an introspective voyage of his own. To an extent, Leys allows Napoleon some redemption by permitting him to integrate to a degree with the common people he once was emperor over.

Leys wants us to see how even the once most powerful man is a victim to the insolence of history and that once his day in the sun is passed, he is forever unable to reassert himself back into his public identity without being thought insane. In the end, after being "reincarnated" by the author, Napoleon receives no better treatment by him than he did by the British who twice held him prisoner.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MaximWilson
I loved it, sustained wry humour
LibraryThing member seeword
A delightful piece of alternative history as Napoleon escapes from exile in plan carefully constructed by his loyalists. The plan goes awry and he must make his way alone. Once in Paris, he finds that he has changed so much that he is unrecognizable and he must improvise and try to accept that his
Show More
days of glory are past.
Show Less

Awards

Victorian Premier's Literary Award (Winner — The Dinny O'Hearn Prize — 1992)

Language

Original language

French

Original publication date

1986

Physical description

144 p.; 5.05 inches

ISBN

1590178424 / 9781590178423

Similar in this library

Page: 0.515 seconds