The Napoleon Masterpiece
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Criminally out of print, this is Burgess at his best. As good (if not better) than Earthly Powers, and considerably superior to any of the Enderby books. Napoleon Symphony is subtitled 'A Novel in Four Movements', with a portion each for his victories as a general, his rise to First Consul and Emperor, his decline, and finally his exile. The shifts in pace and tone for each movement are wonderful, as are the verse forms which Burgess uses to cover a mass of historical detail with playfulness and brevity.
The result is a novel which achieves the balance between historical context and individual experience better than any I have read. Napoleon himself is an extraordinary force - a tight bundle of angst and energy, possessed by his purposes and destinies. Comical too, with his halitosis, his meandering lines of conversation, his bursts of ego and half-baked philosophy. The sections on the Russia campaign flow over with vivid atrocity and panic, the Paris scenes with farce, the exile with wistfulness and even some tenderness.
Burgess is at his lyrical best here - by turns playful and disorientating, especially after Napoleon's fall, his mind and body sagging. This is to be consumed in great chunks, allowing yourself to be totally absorbed into this sumptuous epic, its blossoms of image, its rhythm and rhyme.
It will reward you. Astounding.
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