This is an auction for THE GLORY OF EMPIRE by Jean d'Ormesson.

Amazon.com review:

"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."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jean d'Ormesson (born 1925) is a French novelist whose work mostly consists of partially or totally autobiographic novels. D’Ormesson attended the École normale supérieure, where he studied literature, history, and philosophy. In 1971 The Glory of the Empire won the Grand Prize for fiction from the Académie française. Among his novels, d'Ormesson has a trilogy in which he recounts a much-imagined version of the exploits of four of the Mitford sisters as "Pandora, Vanessa, Atalanta and Jessica".

More on Wikipedia.

Paperback 2016.

392 pages.

Very good condition.

The cost of shipping is $3.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.