The stunning finale to the award-winning Napoleonic trilogy presents the
legendary figure as you have never before seen him -- exiled and
humiliated and vividly real. Patrick Rambaud closes his epic trilogy,
which began with The Battle, winner of the Prix Goncourt and the
Grand Prix Roman de l'Academie Francaise, and The Retreat. In 1814
Napoleon is racing back to Paris from the debacle of his Russian
invasion. A plot afoot in the capital -- to return a royal to the throne
-- succeeds, and Napoleon's marshals force him to abdicate and go into
exile. Octave Senecal, Napoleon's loyal aide and savior, tells the tale
of their journey south through the angry, mob-filled countryside to
Elba, a tiny island off the coast of Tuscany. Here Patrick Rambaud
brings to life not the Napoleon of the history books, but Napoleon the
man -- a man horribly bored by exile, gambling with his mother to pass
the time, spearing the occasional tuna with local fishermen, and
fretting constantly that secret agents and murderers surround him. He is
soon planning his escape, while in France his former soldiers spend
their evenings drinking to the return of "l'absent." They won't have
long to wait.
