The Emperor's Last Island

Oct 5, 2024 6:51 PM

Author:Julia Blackburn

The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here. It follows him through the eyes of those who lived with him, who guarded him, who managed only to catch a brief glimpse of him, alive or dead.

It is also a personal account: a description of Julia Blackburn's own journey to St Helena and at the same time a journey through the private memories and associations evoked by the telling of this poignant and curious story.

Reviews

A melancholy and exquisitely bizarre essay on fame, morality and the vanity of human wishes

—— London Review of Books

Moving and original... Julia Blackburn writes like an angel

—— Mary Wesley

Pure enchantment, stranger than fiction

—— Cosmopolitan

Nuanced ... Sandbrook has rummaged deep into the cultural life of the era to remind us how rich it was, from Bowie to Dennis Potter, Martin Amis to William Golding

—— Damian Whitworth , The Times

Sharply and fluently written ... entertaining ... By making you quite nostalgic for the present, Sandbrook has done a public service

—— Evening Standard

Devine has brought a greater understanding to this fascinating subject and offers an intriguing perspective on a key component of our history and national identity

—— Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland , Herald

Figes has achieved something extraordinary ... the gulag story lacks individuals for us to sympathise with: a Primo Levi, an Anne Frank or even an Oskar Schindler. Just Send Me Word may well be the book to change that ... the kind of love that most of us can only dream of

—— Oliver Bullough , Independent

Remarkable ... Figes, selecting and then interpreting this mass of letters, makes them tell two kinds of story. The first is a uniquely detailed narrative of the gulag, of the callous, slatternly universe which consumed millions of lives ... The second is about two people determined not to lose each other

—— Neal Ascherson , Guardian

A quiet, moving and memorable account of life in a totalitarian state ... The book often reads like a novel ... captivating

—— Evening Standard

Orlando Figes has wrought something beautiful from dark times

—— Ian Thomson , Observer

A heart-rending record of extraordinary human endurance

—— Kirkus Reviews

[A] remarkable tale of love and devotion during the worst years of the USSR ... [Figes's] fine narrative pacing enhances this moving, memorable story

—— Publishers Weekly

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