I am not making this up:
Napoleon Bonaparte – the romantic novelist
The first English version of his romantic novella Clisson et Eugénie, is due out this autumn, according to the Bookseller magazine.
When Napoleon died in exile on St Helena, aged 51, his possessions included the manuscript of his novella, the pages of which were scattered as souvenirs. But the fragments have been pieced together over the years, with the first page fetching £17,000 at auction two years ago.
The manuscript was written when he was an ambitious young soldier aged 26, shortly before he made his name by smashing a royalist coup in Paris in 1795. It tells the story of a brilliant young soldier who loves, loses and dies heroically in battle “pierce by a thousand blows.”
The New Ledger doesn’t really want to believe it. I sympathize, but it’s all too frighteningly plausible. They just let anybody write, you know…
[pause]
What?