The Emperor's Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena

by Julia Blackburn

Overview

In 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on St. Helena for a surreal exile that would last until his death six years later. • "Dazzling... a compelling meditation on Napoleon's exile...Blackburn has brought her startlingly imaginative sensitivity to bear on a vanished time."—The New York Times Book Review

“A resonant meditation on exile, fame, the stories we tell about ourselves (and) the bigger stories we tell about our great figures.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679739371
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/31/1993
Series:	Vintage Departures
Edition description:	1st Vintage Books ed
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	223,770
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Julia Blackburn is the author of three books of nonfiction, Charles Waterton, The Emperor’s Last Island, and Daisy Bates in the Desert, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in England.

Editorial Reviews

An engaging chronicle of Napoleon's difficult exile. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Part history, part travelog, part personal reminiscence, this unusual and intriguing book treats Napoleon Bonaparte's life in exile (1815-21) on the remote British island of St. Helena. Scholars will find no new facts or interpretations here, but Blackburn offers a vivid evocation of the mood and setting of the dethroned emperor's final years, mixing stories about her own family and visit to the island with details about Napoleon. The book expertly conjures up images of the aging Napoleon playing with local children, quarreling with his British guards, and getting fat in his rat-infested house on the warm, wet, and windswept island. One lively topic about which the author has little to say, unfortunately, is the cause of the emperor's death. On that question one should see a book absent from Blackburn's bibliography: The Murder of Napoleon ( LJ 2/15/82) by Ben Weider and David Hapgood.-- T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., N.Y.

Library Journal