*Covid-19 Update: Although our physical space has temporarily closed, the Library will continue with its Evening with an Author programming during the period of confinement. Our events will continue to be free and open to the public, via Zoom (please RSVP here to receive meeting details and password). We have moved the events up, to begin at 17h00 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.

Please join us for a discussion with author and American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow Mark Braude about his recent book, The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Exile to Escape,  a “coup de coeur” for the 2019 American Library in Paris Book Award and a community favorite.

As many of us continue to follow confinement or quarantine measures in the fight against covid-19, themes of exile, banishment, and separation are at the forefront of our minds. Indeed, Mark’s interest in Napoleon stems from this very specific experience of his off the main stage of Europe in 1814-15. In finding a novel approach to a larger than life personality, Mark gives us something unexpected and fresh–he takes us far beyond those chapters of Napoleon’s life that have received extensive treatment and analysis. In our discussion, Mark will tell us more about his research and findings, and provide his reflections on how exile affected one of the most famous historical figures of all time, reminding us that despite having lived an extraordinary life, Napoleon was, after all, a human being who often found himself separated from or at the mercy of others, as was the case during his exile on Elba.

Mark was selected as an American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow for Spring 2020. Though Mark was unable to join us at the Library in May 2020 as originally planned, we look forward to welcoming him sometime in 2020-21, during which time he will write, research, and engage further with our community by offering another lecture as well as a workshop.

MARK BRAUDE is the author of The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba From Exile to Escape and Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle. He is currently at work on a book of narrative nonfiction about the French artist and model Kiki de Montparnasse, focusing on her professional and romantic entanglement with the American photographer Man Ray in 1920s Paris, to be published by W.W. Norton.