Fair warning: the two original works are compilation of unfinished drafts. For the first time, English readers can explore Stendhal’s dual portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte in one volume: Life of Napoleon (1817) and Memoirs on Napoleon (1836). Never before united in translation, these works trace a writer’s restless dance with the Corsican titan across two decades. In the Life , a young Stendhal sifts through the wreckage of Napoleon’s fall, torn between awe and critique. Twenty years later, seasoned by The Red and the Black , the Memoirs blaze with defiance and lyricism, steeped in memories of a youth in Napoleonic France. No seamless biography awaits, Stendhal gallops past gaps, leaps over details, yet this imperfection holds its power.