Napoleon: The Song of Departure

Proof copy. Royal 8vo. Pp. [viii], 403, [1 (blank)]. Blue pictorial card covers, printed in white.

Translated from the French by William Hobson. Originally published in 1997 by Éditions Robert Laffont as Le Chant du départ.

The first in the author's quartet of novels about the French Emperor and a huge best-seller in France. It takes us from his birth in Corsica in 1769, through marriage to Josephine Beauharnais ('a climbing flowering plant entwining itself round a tree'), to the triumph of the Italian campaign, and the failure of the Egyptian, to end with the coup of 18 Brumaire 1799 and Bonaparte's election as Consul.

A six-hour mini-series, directed by Yves Simoneau, and starring Christian Clavier [as Napoléon], Gérard Depardieu, Isabella Rossellini, John Malkovich, and Anouk Aimée, aired in October 2002, on France 2. Éminence grise of French politics and letters, with well over eighty books published in various genres, Max Gallo has been a member of the Académie française since May 31st 2007.