The Monsters of St. Helena - Tapa blanda

"An innately engaging story...adroit and poignant." --"Los Angeles Time"s "[An] elegant, elegiac new novel...[a] little gem of a book." --"The Washington Post Book World" "[Hansen's] emperor is intriguingly, tragically human.... Moving seamlessly between stories, dialects, and perspectives, Brooks Hansen builds a complex weave of dreams, myths, folk theater, and history.... A novel rooted in a wealth of historical detail, yet touched by pure magic." --"The Seattle Times" "Ingenious...written with a...consciously literary grace that has the remarkable power to act as a lens." --"The New York Times Book Review"

In 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte is exiled to the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic, "the place on earth farthest from any other place." The island is populated by English expatriates, the descendants of Portuguese settlers, and their slaves. Bonaparte's arrival--with a retinue of fifteen hundred people--throws the island population into turmoil and particularly alarms the slaves, who believe the emperor to be a demon. After settling in a teahouse in a patch of briars and fruit trees, Napoleon is befriended by a teenage girl, Betsy Balcombe--the only person who is able to penetrate the imperial facade and understand the proud, wounded man within.