title: The Death of Napoleon (New York Review Books Classics)
author:  Simon Leys 
description: What a pleasure to read a real writer...<i>The Death of Napoleon</i>is utterly satisfying sentence by sentence and scene by scene, but it is also compulsively readable...By giving us a Napoleon who cannot find how to retrieve [his public] face, Simon Leys throws light on our universal need to bring inner and outer reality together, to understand who we really are. Gabriel Josipovici,<i>The Times Literary Supplement</i><br /><br />I am glad to report that Simon Leyss <i>The Death of Napoleon</i> has one hell of an ideathe absurdity of trying to retrieve time or gloryand is written with the grace of a poem. Edna OBrien, <i>The Sunday Times<br /></i><br />Alternative history...is enjoyable and at the same time, like all daydreaming, brings a sensation of guilt. But<i>The Death of Napoleon</i>is also a fable, and Simon Leys is an expert fabulist. Penelope Fitzgerald,<i>The New York Times Book Review</i><br /> <br /> Entertaining and clever, this is a sweetening reminder of the ephemerality of great achievementsand by implication those of the not so great. <i>Booklist </i><br /> <br /> An elegant and engaging piece of alternative history, gently tragic and wryly comic. D. J. Enright, <i>The</i> <i>Times Literary Supplement</i><br /> <br /> A small masterpiece. So much spirit, so much insolence, and so much emotion joined in so few pages overwhelmingly earn the readers enthusiasm and praise. One closes the book regretfully, sincerely hoping that Simon Leys will not stop there. Corinne Desportes, <i>Le Magazine Littraire</i><br /> <br /> Powerful, touchingand delightful, toothis invention of a post-Waterloo career led by Bonapartenot on St. Helena. Francis Steegmuller<br /><br />[Simon Leys's] beautiful, small novel[by] an elegant stylist who brought to all of his subjects both lightness of wit and philosophical depth, and<i>The Death of Napoleon</i>is a case in point. Beyond the delightful invention and whimsy, this comic tale of Napoleons imaginary yet all-too-human tribulations poses serious questions about the relationship of truth, history and imagination.The truth of Napoleon, Leyss novel proposes, is that he was a man, subject to laws of chance, indifference and mortality, one among many participants in the human comedy. Martin Riker,<i>The Wall Street Journal</i>
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  THE END OF FAME
  
  Bill Adams  
  and  
  Cecil Brooks
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
    
  
  Copyright © 1994, 2020 by Lia Adams and Cecil J. Brooks
  
  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
  Conventions. Except insofar as is implicitly granted by sale on the Kindle
  platform, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
  system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including electronic,
  mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
  permission of the authors.
  
  This new edition of THE END OF FAME has given us the opportunity to make a few
  small editorial revisions, but is otherwise a complete and unabridged version
  of the work originally published by Del Rey / Ballantine Books in 1994.
  
  Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare
  and The Society of Authors as their representative for permission to reprint
  “Napoleon” by Walter de la Mare.
  
  Cover art by Bill A