Napoleon's Last Island by Thomas Keneally

Napoleon's Last Island by Thomas Keneally

The bestselling author of Schindler's List and The Daughters of Mars returns with an insightful and nimble.consistently fresh and engaging (The New York Times Book Review) novel about the remarkable friendship between a quick-witted young woman and one of history's most intriguing figures, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the final years of his life in exile on St. Helena.

In October 1815, after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was sent to live the remainder of his life in exile on the remote Southern Atlantic island of St. Helena. There, on what he called the cursed rock, with no chance of escape, he found an unexpected ally: a spirited British teenager named Betsy Balcombe who lived on the island with her family. While Napoleon waited for his own accommodations to be made livable, the Balcombe family played host to the infamous exile, a decision that would have far-reaching consequences for them all.

In Napoleon's Last Island, based on a true story, acclaimed author Thomas Keneally re-creates Betsy's powerful and complex friendship with the man dubbed The Great Ogre, her clashes and alliances with his remaining courtiers, and her uneasy journey to adulthood as she begins to see the imperfections and weaknesses of human nature. As he brings a fascinating period vividly to life, Keneally shines a fresh light on one of history's most enigmatic, charismatic figures. The book is a complex and mesmerizing success, raves the Christian Science Monitor, hailing it as a masterpiece in miniature.unfailingly great reading and] testimony to the fact that Keneally is our greatest living practitioner of historical fiction.

Rosie Scott has published six novels and a collection each of short stories, poems and essays. She and Thomas Keneally co-edited a PEN anthology of writers in detention, earning them a nomination for the Human Rights Medal and helping to gain PEN the Community Human Rights Award. Her novel Faith Singer was on the list of 50 Essential Reads by Contemporary Authors compiled by the Orange Prize committee, the Guardian and the Hay Festival. Thomas Keneally is a novelist, playwright, and nonfiction author who is best-known for the Booker Prize-winning novel Schindler's Ark, which was adapted into the movie Schindler's List. His other titles include the Penguin Lives biography Abraham Lincoln, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles, and A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781501128424
ISBN 10	1501128426
Title	Napoleon's Last Island
Author	Thomas Keneally
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Atria Books
Year published	2016-10-04
Number of pages	432
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable