The Black Room at Longwood
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Jean-Paul Kauffmann, Patricia Clancy |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Napoleon's Exile on Saint Helena |
| Publisher | Four Walls Eight Windows |
| Honors | |
| From 1815, the year of his defeat at Waterloo, to 1821, the year of his death, Napoleon was exiled, a prisoner of the British on the island of St. Helena. Although Napoleon was free to move about the island, as his time in the tropics wore on, he increasingly chose seclusion. Napoleon tried to survive on a diet of memories, which he recounted to the few people left around him. But, as Jean-Paul Kauffmann discovered, Napoleon had been poisoned—by nostalgia for his days of glory and grief for the past. Part travelogue, part history, The Black Room at Longwood is informed by a grimly personal element—the author’s own three-year captivity as a hostage in Beirut. | |
From 1815, the year of his defeat at Waterloo, to 1821, the year of his death, Napoleon was exiled, a prisoner of the British on the island of St. Helena. Although Napoleon was free to move about the island, as his time in the tropics wore on, he increasingly chose seclusion. Napoleon tried to survive on a diet of memories, which he recounted to the few people left around him. But, as Jean-Paul Kauffmann discovered, Napoleon had been poisoned—by nostalgia for his days of glory and grief for the past. Part travelogue, part history, The Black Room at Longwood is informed by a grimly personal element—the author’s own three-year captivity as a hostage in Beirut.
Reviews
Amazon.com
This is an unusually intelligent, elegiac book; not merely an account of Napoleon’s last days in exile on the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena but a meditation on the interrelations of past and present and the shadow a figure as gigantic as Napoleon casts onto futurity. On one level, the book is a travelogue, as Jean-Paul Kauffmann revisits modern St. Helena and describes what he finds; the small-scale lives of the islanders are related with tenderness as well as humor. But we also learn a great deal about Napoleon as Kauffmann passes through the places associated with him and attempts to get inside the head of the deposed emperor.
There is a danger of pretentiousness, and there are moments when the Gallic gush is a little much; but overall the sheer force of Kauffmann’s imagination fuses the whole into a powerful and affecting unity. In particular, his lyrical, poetic style has been well translated (by Patricia Clancy) and there are many striking moments. The beaches of St. Helena, for instance, are described as “black shingle, shiny as nuts of coal.” Even the sunrise in this part of the world has a prison-like feel: “only one ray from the rising sun manages to pierce the clouds, falling on a corner of the coast as through a basement window.” Thought-provoking and often exquisite, this is a unique sort of history. —Adam Roberts, Amazon.co.uk
