Crni Napoleon

The work is a fictional biography of Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who became the leader of the Haitian Revolution – the most successful slave uprising in history. Otten vividly depicts the brutal conditions in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), the exploitation of slaves on sugar plantations, and the outbreak of a major rebellion in 1791.

Louverture is portrayed as an exceptional figure: a self-taught genius, a brilliant strategist, and a statesman who managed to unite disunited black armies, wage successful wars against the Spanish, the British, and Napoleon, and establish the first elements of a black state. The novel follows his rise from slave to “black Napoleon,” but also his tragic end – betrayal, arrest, and death in a French prison in 1803.

Otten writes in a dynamic, documentary-artistic style, mixing historical facts with literary depiction. The work was significant in its time because it positively portrayed the black uprising and anti-colonial struggle at a time when this was rare in European literature. At the same time, the author emphasizes universal themes: freedom, equality, betrayal and the price of revolution.

In the Croatian edition from 1940, the novel was part of a popular edition of world writers and attracted readers interested in historical themes and exotic events. Today, Black Napoleon is read as a classic example of a 20th-century novelistic biography and an important literary account of the Haitian Revolution.