Napoleon Symphony

[citation needed] Burgess's Bonaparte is a cuckold suffering from heartburn and halitosis who is portrayed as a wily seducer of Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

His conquest of Egypt is a central theme of the novel, which presents a comedic but detailed and revealing portrait of an Arab and Muslim society under occupation by a Christian Western power.

The novel is dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, who had directed the film adaptation of Burgess's earlier novel, A Clockwork Orange.

Using his own knowledge of symphonic structure, Burgess based his writing closely on the sequence of Beethoven's work, with Napoleon's funeral followed by a resurrection.

He reworked the material into a stage play called Napoleon Rising for the Royal Shakespeare Company, but it remained unperformed in his lifetime.