Glory of the Empire

Barbara Bray, Daniel Mendelsohn, Jean D'Ormesson

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Paperback

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English

New York Review of Books
15 May 2016

Science fiction; Myth & legend told as fiction; Sci-Fi Alternate History; Military

"This is one of renowned French novelist Jean d'Ormesson's masterpieces, a dazzling fictional history that won d'Ormesson the Grand Prize from the Academie fran aise when it was first published in 1971, but has been unavailable to English-speaking readers for decades--until now.

The Glory of the Empire is the rich and absorbing history of an extraordinary empire, at one point a rival to Rome. Rulers such as Prince Basil of Onessa, who founded the Empire but whose treacherous ways made him a byword for infamy, and the romantic Alexis the Bastard, who dallied in the fleshpots of Egypt, studied Taoism and Buddhism, returned to save the Empire from civil war, and then retired ""to learn how to die,"" come alive in The Glory of the Empire, along with generals, politicians, prophets, scoundrels, and others. D'Ormesson also goes into the daily life of the Empire, its popular customs, and its contribution to the arts and the sciences, which, as he demonstrates, exercised an influence on the world as a whole, from East to West, and whose repercussions are still felt today. But it is all fiction, a thought experiment worthy of Jorge Luis Borges, and in the end The Glory of the Empire emerges as a great shimmering mirage, filling us with wonder even as it makes us wonder at the fugitive nature of power and the meaning of history itself."

By: Barbara Bray, Daniel Mendelsohn, Jean D'Ormesson
Imprint: New York Review of Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 447g
ISBN: 9781590179659
ISBN 10: 159017965X
Publication Date: 15 May 2016
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for Glory of the Empire

D'Ormesson provides witty fictional documentation, parodies opinions of historians and literati (there is a one-line parody of Walt Whitman), borrows outrageously and has caught brilliantly the 'Where is Nineveh now?' tone of sunset reflection. A tour de force. Kirkus Reviews No epic sung, printed, or filmed equals the sweeping turbulence of the 1,000-year history of the Empire...D Ormesson s satire undermines important assumptions of the reigning ideology: that history is objective; narratives, neutral; that language transmits pre-existing truth...[The novel] is pure pleasure...it will absorb you, puzzle you, make you laugh...So powerful is the narrative that the passive reader risks overlooking much of the satire; the active reader, however, can find materials for a debunking operation the likes of which d Ormesson himself perhaps never imagined. William Beauchamp, The New York Times