This brilliant reworking of a 19th-century footnote is more than historical fiction, it’s an account of contemporary relevance – typical Keneally, then
On a chance visit to an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, the Booker prize-winning author Tom Keneally discovered an astonishing Australian connection to Napoleon Bonaparte. When the exiled emperor was imprisoned on the south Atlantic island of St Helena, he spent three months as a guest of the Balcombe family. Napoleon’s Last Island is the intriguing tale of the friendship that sprung up between the Balcombe’s youngest daughter, Betsy, and the man known as the Great Ogre. A friendship that, in the end, saw the Balcombes exiled to Australia.
It is October 1815. The Balcombe family reside at their St Helena residence the Briars. William Balcombe works for the East India Company. His daughters, Jane and Betsy, live a free and easy life, interrupted only by occasional bouts of education. Betsy loves this tropical paradise and never wishes to leave.
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