The Emperor's Last Island - Julia Blackburn
The Emperor's Last Island - Julia Blackburn
Non-Fiction
Pages: 288
It's always somewhat agreeable when you come across a book that's almost impossible to classify. This as a case in point - it's history but not quite, a travelogue but not entirely, a personal journal but not really, an imaginative interpretation but with a grounding of fact, a biography but of who, Napoleon or St Helena? It's somehow all of these things and none of them. I really didn't quite know what to make of it reading it, and having finished it now I still don't. I certainly enjoyed it, however!
Napoleon was exiled to St Helena in 1814 and died there six years later. It was by far the most eventful occurrence in St Helena's history and has come to define the island ever since. In this book Julia Blackburn depicts both Napoleon's experience on the island and the island's experience of him - and in many ways the impact of both on the author herself. St Helena itself is as much the subject of this book as Napoleon, and perhaps Julia Blackburn too.
It's a very poetic read, not your usual dry recital of dates and names and places. It's also a very imaginative read and without the usual historical accompaniment of footnotes and references, it's hard to know just how much of this is based on fact and how much on imaginative interpretation. I've certainly rarely read history where the author is so prominent in the narrative. It seems to work here. There's a sort of dreamy timelessness to this tale, perhaps an attempt to evoke how time must have felt to Napoleon, living out day by dreary day in the most isolated place on earth...