The Glory of the Empire

The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, a History (French: La Gloire de l'empire) is a 1971 novel by the French writer Jean d'Ormesson. It is written as a history book about a fictional ancient empire. The book was awarded the 1971 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. William Beauchamp of The New York Times described the book as a satire that "undermines important assumptions of the reigning ideology: that history is objective; narratives, neutral; that language transmits pre‐existing truth", and wrote that Ormesson's status in the French establishment contributes to making the book subversive.