Featured Book

The King of Corsica

Written by Michael Kleeberg, Translated by David Dollenmayer

A modern classic where history, philosophy, and eroticism collide in the grand tradition of the 18th-century novel.

The son of an impoverished Westphalian aristocrat, Theodor von Neuhoff is both seductive and opportunistic. Sent to Versailles to be a page to Princess Palatine, he distinguishes himself as a brilliant and fluent conversationalist with a taste for the ladies and for political intrigue. His missions take him to Holland, Mecklenburg, Venice, and Spain, where he discovers his true vocation as a double agent. Convinced that politics is only a game, in 1736 he has himself proclaimed king by the Corsicans rebelling against Genovese hegemony. As Theodor the First, he plans to transform “his island” into a prosperous kingdom. Yet, he gravely overestimates his own abilities as a monarch and goes down in history as the man who was king for a summer, dying a pauper in London.

In The King of Corsica, Michael Kleeberg—an accomplished prose stylist—draws the portrait of a historical figure caught between the excesses of the Baroque age and the Enlightenment, a master of illusion whose preoccupations are all too familiar to modern readers: money, love, and fame.

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Featured Author

Jean Hatzfeld

Author of Life Laid Bare

Jean Hatzfeld, an international reporter for Libération since 1973, is the author of many books, including two on the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, winner of the Prix Joseph Kessel. He lives in Paris.

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