Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Der Napoleon von Notting Hill
Go deeper: the whole of Der Napoleon von Notting Hill
About 3 h 40 min to read.Für wen es gedacht ist
This book suits readers who love wit and paradox, comic fantasy, and stories about loyalty to a street, a town or a home. It also rewards anyone curious about how a joke can change a city.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
What if a joke grew teeth? In this novel, a bored London clerk is picked by lot to be King of England. His name is Auberon Quin, and he has spent his whole life treating everything as a game.
G. K. Chesterton published The Napoleon of Notting Hill in 1904. It is a satirical fantasy set eighty years ahead, in a London where almost nothing has changed. It answers the prophets of his age with a joke: ordinary people refuse to behave as predicted. The king expects laughter. He gets a war.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1Humanity keeps cheating its clever prophetsFree
- 2A stranger in green meets the modern mind
- 3The joker is made king and rebuilds the city
- 4One boy takes the joke seriously
- 5Wayne recruits Pump Street shop by shop
- 6Arithmetic and money march on Pump Street
- 7The lamps go out and the cleverest plan fails
- 8A small place holds everything a person loves
Punkt 1 von 8
Humanity keeps cheating its clever prophets
The novel opens with a game. Chesterton says the human race has played it since the beginning, and the name is Cheat the Prophet. The players listen politely to what wise men say about the next generation. Then they wait for the wise men to die and do something else.
Each prophet works the same way. He takes something that is happening now and stretches it until it reaches the sky. A pig that is larger than the other pigs, one of them argues, must someday be larger than an elephant. Another expects men to return to nature and graze like cows.
The laborers, sailors, children and women kept a strange look in their eyes, and the wise men could not read it. The people were still playing. So when the story opens, London is almost exactly as it is today. The people had lost faith in revolutions, and the King is a mere universal secretary. People are more changeable than any forecast, and the book bets on that. Takeaway: Confident predictions about the future usually fail because people are more surprising than their prophets.
That’s 1 of 8 key points.
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Go deeper: the whole of Der Napoleon von Notting Hill
About 3 h 40 min to read.Who’s who
- Auberon Quin
- A bored government clerk with a baby's face, he is chosen king by lot and wants only to turn public life into a joke.
- Adam Wayne
- A tall, red-haired young Provost of Notting Hill who takes the king's joke seriously and wants to defend his street with a sword.
- James Barker
- A polished, ambitious politician who believes in order and public interest and becomes Provost of South Kensington.
- Wilfrid Lambert
- A good-humored, big-nosed friend of Quin and Barker who dislikes nonsense and says what he thinks.
- Mr. Buck
- A blunt draper and Provost of North Kensington who thinks war is arithmetic and wants a road built through Pump Street.
- Turnbull
- A toy shop keeper with a lifelong hobby of war games who becomes Wayne's general and military planner.
- Juan del Fuego
- A proud former President of Nicaragua in a green uniform, he insists that his lost country survives as an idea.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 57,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 3 h 50 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 12 other languages
Questions about Der Napoleon von Notting Hill
What is The Napoleon of Notting Hill about?
It tells of a future London where a joking king revives medieval city pride in the suburbs, and a young man named Adam Wayne takes it so seriously that he fights to defend his street against developers.
When was The Napoleon of Notting Hill written and is it a true story?
G. K. Chesterton published it in 1904. It is a satirical fantasy, not a true story, set about eighty years in his future, with real London districts as its stage.
Who is Auberon Quin?
Quin is a witty, childlike government clerk chosen at random to be King of England. He loves nonsense above all and creates the Charter of the Cities as a prank without foreseeing its consequences.
What does the title mean?
The title compares Adam Wayne, a young Provost of Notting Hill, to the great conqueror Napoleon. It suggests that a small neighborhood can have its own heroic leader and a grand destiny.
What is the main message of The Napoleon of Notting Hill?
Chesterton argues that love of a particular place, however small or ridiculous it seems, gives life meaning and courage, and that mockery and earnest belief both belong to a healthy mind.
Cite this edition
Chesterton, G. K. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-napoleon-of-notting-hill.
Chesterton, G. K. (2026). The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-napoleon-of-notting-hill (Original work published 1904)
Chesterton, G. K. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-napoleon-of-notting-hill.
@book{chesterton2026napoleon,
author = {Chesterton, G. K.},
title = {The Napoleon of Notting Hill},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-napoleon-of-notting-hill},
note = {First published 1904}
}
