France Book Tours

Author Jean d’Ormesson

on Tour

December 2-6

with his

The Conversation:
The Night Napoleon Changed The World

Translated by Timothy Bent

[historical novel]

 Release date: November 6, 2013
by Arcade Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-61145-905-0
also available as an ebook

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SYNOPSIS

After pulling the French people back from the abyss of chaos and misrule, Napoleon Bonaparte is on the brink of declaring himself emperor. “An empire is a Republic that has been enthroned,” he says. And so history is made.

As Napoleon stands at the precipice of his new empire, Jean d’Ormesson’s novel The Conversation: The Night Napoleon Changed the World captures a fictional conversation in which the thirty-year-old, struggling between revolutionary ideals and his overwhelming thirst for power, declares his secret intention to ascend the throne.

Second Consul Jean-Jacques Cambacérès, a brilliant law scholar and close ally, bears witness to the birth of this self-created legend: a man who left his mark upon time not through birth, but with ambition, and whose hubris is still invoked as a cautionary tale. Their imagined conversation brilliantly captures the tenuous moment when one man’s dream becomes reality. History, of course, records Napoleon’s dizzying triumphs and subsequent fall. [provided by the publisher]

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Jean d’Ormesson is the author of more than fifteen books, has a PhD in philosophy, graduated from the École Normale, and is a distinguished member of the Académie Française. He lives in Paris.

Timothy Bent has translated a number of books from French, including Brassaï’s Henry Miller: The Paris Years, Emmanuel Carrère’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick, and Stéphane Audeguy’s novel, The Theory of Clouds. A former editor at Arcade Publishing, St. Martin’s Press, and Harcourt, he is currently Executive Editor, Trade, at Oxford University Press in New York, where he focuses upon history, biography, and current events.

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PRAISE FOR THE CONVERSATION

“D’ORMESSON SEIZES THE FRAGILE MOMENT WHEN A MAN’S AMBITION TURNS THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN.” —LE POINT

“In this imaginary conversation between men, a sort of docufiction, d’Ormesson focuses brilliantly on the man who would be emperor.” —Le Récit

VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR SCHEDULE

Monday, December 2
Review + Giveaway at Enchanted By Josephine

Tuesday, December 3
Review + Giveaway at I Am, Indeed

Wednesday, December 4
Review + Excerpt + Giveaway at
Musings of a Writer and Unabashed Francophile

Thursday, December 5
Review + Giveaway at Words And Peace

Friday, December 6
Review + Giveaway at Making My Mark

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