<div><strong>A notorious episode in Napoleon's career, brilliantly illuminated in fiction</strong><br />

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Brooks Hansen's new novel is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's last exile, in 1815, on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic, &quot;the place on earth farthest from any other place.&quot; The island is populated by English expatriates and the descendants of Portuguese settlers and their slaves--and by the spirit of the island's first native, the sixteenth-century nobleman Fernando Lopez, who haunts them all, and the novel, in strange and captivating ways.<br />

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Bonaparte's arrival--with a retinue of fifteen hundred people--throws the island population into turmoil and particularly alarms the slaves, who see &quot;Bony&quot; as a white demon. After settling in a tea-house in a patch of briars and fruit trees, where he will write his memoirs and await his inevitable end, Napoleon is befriended by a teenage girl, Betsy Balcombe--the only person who is able to penetrate the imperial facade and get to know the proud, wounded man within.<br />

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Naturally gorgeous, splendidly isolated, with its own history, manners, graveyard secrets, and even a vivid folk religion, the island of St. Helena becomes a character in its own right. <em>The Monsters of St. Helena</em> is a novel as unique and delightful as the territory it depicts, and a great achievement for this gifted writer.</div>