The Conversation - Jean d'Ormesson

This book was my prize for winning French Bingo last year (merci encore, Emma!). The book's subtitle is The Night Napoleon Changed the World, and it's a transcript of a fictional conversation between Napoleon and his Second Consul, Jean-Jacques Cambacérès, in which Napoleon outlines his plans for his empire, and explains its philosophical underpinnings. According to the preface, the author based Napoleon's dialogue on contemporary accounts of things he actually said, and the dialogue does seem very plausible as a result. This book is small in size but it paints a very detailed picture of the mind of the man who, in some ways, created a new France after the revolution. This would be a great book for a history buff.