In a writing career that has spanned more than half a century, Thomas Keneally has published more than 30 novels alongside 13 works of non-fiction. Now 80, the prolific Australian shows little sign of slowing down. Napoleon’s Last Island, inspired by a museum exhibit Keneally chanced upon in Melbourne, takes him to St Helena, the island to which Napoleon was exiled after his defeat at Waterloo. After Elba the British were taking no chances. This outcrop of rock some 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was “the deepest pocket they could find to put the Universal Demon in”. Arrangements were hurriedly made, but on arrival Napoleon’s residence was still under construction. He was billeted temporarily in a summer house at The Briars, home of William Balcombe, superintendent of stores for the East India Company.
Over the months that followed, Napoleon charmed the Balcombe family, inspiring their deep affection. Thirty years later, the younger of the Balcombe daughters, Betsy, published a journal purportedly written during that time, and it is from these recollections, along with other contemporaneous diaries, that Keneally spins his tale. Though by his own admission he plays somewhat fast and loose with the historical facts, filling the gaps with inventions of his own, the novel seeks to shed light on an afterword of history and so on the Corsican Ogre himself: to tell, in its author’s phrase, “the truth by telling lies”.
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