The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, a History

Jean D'Ormesson

may 2016 · New York Review of Books

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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 Basil the Great 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 to die,” come alive in The Glory of the Empire, along with generals, politicians, prophets, scoundrels, and others. Jean 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 the East to the 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.

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Jean D’Ormesson (1925-1917) was born in Paris and attended the École normale supérieure, where he studied literature, history, and philosophy. His first novel, L’amour est un plaisir, was published in 1956, and in 1971 The Glory of the Empire won the Grand Prize for fiction from the Académie française. He has served as chairman of the board of the newspaper Le Figaro and secretary-general and president of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies at UNESCO. The recipient of numerous distinctions, he was elected to the Académie française in 1973 and was presented the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in 2014.

Barbara Bray (1924–2010) was a translator of twentieth-century French literature into English. She was an early champion of Marguerite Duras and Samuel Beckett, and also translated the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Her translations of The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart, Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret, and Prisoner of Love by Jean Genet are available as NYRB Classics.

Daniel Mendelsohn was born in 1960 and studied Classics at the University of Virginia and at Princeton. His essays and reviews appear regularly in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review. His books include The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million; a memoir, The Elusive Embrace; and two collections of critical essays, including Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, published by New York Review Books. He teaches literature at Bard College.