The Dark Room at Longwood

Download or read book The Dark Room at Longwood written by Jean-Paul Kauffmann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1999 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Waterloo, Napoleon gave himself up to the British, expecting to end his days leading the life of a country gentleman. Instead he was exiled to the remote island of St. Helena where he was to spend the last six years of his life in a house called Longwood. Jean-Paul Kauffmann, who was himself imprisoned as a hostage in Beirut for three years, visits Longwood and sits for days in the French Emperor's simple room in an attempt to understand those years of exile. The past seeps into the present and the house slowly comes alive with the great man's presence. Napoleon was accompanied to St. Helena by a faithful few whose eye-witness accounts reveal how he coped with his captivity and how it finally crushed him. The Dark Room at Longwood is Kauffmann's journey back into the past and a finely written, highly evocative exploration of Napoleon's final years.