Primeros reseñadoresPeter Brooks

Publisher's description from Amazon: Napoleon, twenty years dead, rises like a phoenix over the politics of France and the destinies of three lovers. Against the historical backdrop of the French expedition in 1840 to retrieve Napoleon's body from Saint Helena, two men and a woman find themselves engulfed in long-dormant and dangerous political passions. Philippe de Rohan-Chabot, an aristocratic young diplomat, is charged with bringing the body from the island prison where Napoleon died to a glorious tomb at Les Invalides in Paris. Chabot's rival is the aging diplomat and author Henri Beyle, known to posterity as Stendhal. The enigmatic and impulsive Amelia Curial must free herself from the shadow of her mother's scandalous loves and untimely death, and from the life of stale convention that her family urges upon her. The dead emperor is a token in a political game to appease the enemies of the monarchy, but that gamble imperils the king's rule and a new revolution looms. Meanwhile, the interplay of the three central characters traces a delicate pattern of romance, longing, misunderstanding, and the obstacles to the pursuit of happiness.

Napoleon, twenty years dead, rises like a phoenix over the politics of France and the destinies of three lovers. Against the historical backdrop of the French expedition in 1840 to retrieve Napoleon's body from Saint Helena, two men and a woman find themselves engulfed in long-dormant and dangerous political passions. Philippe de Rohan-Chabot, an aristocratic young diplomat, is charged with bringing the body from the island prison where Napoleon died to a glorious tomb at Les Invalides in Paris. Chabot's rival is the aging diplomat and author Henri Beyle, known to posterity as Stendhal. The enigmatic and impulsive Amelia Curial must free herself from the shadow of her mother's scandalous loves and untimely death, and from the life of stale convention that her family urges upon her. The dead emperor is a token in a political game to appease the enemies of the monarchy, but that gamble imperils the king's rule and a new revolution looms. Meanwhile, the interplay of the three central characters traces a delicate pattern of romance, longing, misunderstanding, and the obstacles to the pursuit of happiness.

A Bilingual New York Review Books Original Vivant Denon’s No Tomorrow is one of the masterpieces of eighteenth-century French libertine literature, a book to set beside Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses, except that where Laclos’s icy novel is one of hellish depravity, Denon’s ravishing novella is a paradisal diversion. This tale of seduction is itself a seduction, with a plot that could be said to slowly unveil itself before arriving at last at an unexpected consummation. Summoned by Madame de T–– to her country house, the young hero of the novella is taken on a tour of the grounds, only the beginning of a night that not only will be full of unanticipated delights but will give rise to unforeseen, perhaps unanswerable, questions. Lydia Davis’s definitive translation of Denon’s slim masterpiece is accompanied by the French text. Peter Brooks, Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University, provides an introduction that explores the mysteries of No Tomorrow’s original publication and the subtleties of Denon’s ethics of love.