Napoleon Symphony

By Anthony Burgess

A grand and tragi-comic symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, this novel unteases and reweaves Napoleon's life - from the first great days of his campaigns in 1796 to exile and death on St. Helena a quarter of a century later. Burgess' Bonaparte is a cuckold, afflicted with heartburn and halitosis while enacting a wily seduction of Tsar Alexander, conquering Egypt and crowning himself Emperor.

Witty, sardonic, intellectual, Napoleon Symphony is Burgess at his most challenging and inventive. In creating a novel based on a musical form, Burgess is playing with structure, from the grand, ambitious shape of the novel itself, through to the finer composition of each sentence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781847658913

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917. From 1954 to 1960 he was stationed in Malaysia as an education officer and during this time he started writing The Malayan Trilogy. He was an author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. Diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour in 1959, Burgess became a full-time writer and went on to write a book a year up until his death in 1993. His many works include: The Complete Enderby, Tremor of Intent and The Kingdom of the Wicked, as well as works for the stage such as Blooms of Dublin: A Musical Play Based On James Joyce's Ulysses (1986), and an adaptation of his own novel, A Clockwork Orange, produced in 1987.

Reviews for Napoleon Symphony

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Burgess is a skilled entertainer, and I have a fondness for this effort. Beethoven having written a Third symphony, which he had dedicated to "Bonaparte", as an expression of respect for a man dedicated to the overthrow of the "Ancient Regime" and upon hearing of Napoleon's Imperial Coronation, having altered the dedication, Burgess felt inspired. He attempts, in this trot through Napoleon's career, to write, so far as possible, in the rhythm of the symphonic movement covering the Napoleonic moment. It is a fun rad.