The Count of Monte Cristo

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Harper Perennial, 2008 - Fiction - 1272 pages

The ultimate story of escape to riches, revenge and redemption by 'the Napoleon of storytellers'.

Falsley accused of treason, Edmond Dantes is arrested on his wedding night and imprisoned in the grim island fortress of Chateau d'If. After staging a dramatic escape he sets out to discover the fabuouls treasure on the island of Monte Cristo and uses it to exact revenge on those responsible for his incarcaration.

The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas' novels present a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero's ultimate doscomfort with the hubristic implications of his own actions. A novel of enormous tension and excitement, The Count of Monte Cristo is also a tale of obsession and revenge, with Dantes, believing himself to be an Angel of Providence, pursuing his vengeance to the bitter end before realising that he himself is a victim of fate.

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About the author (2008)

After an idle youth, Alexandre Dumas went to Paris and spent some years writing. A volume of short stories and some farces were his only productions until 1927, when his play Henri III (1829) became a success and made him famous. It was as a storyteller rather than a playwright, however, that Dumas gained enduring success. Perhaps the most broadly popular of French romantic novelists, Dumas published some 1,200 volumes during his lifetime. These were not all written by him, however, but were the works of a body of collaborators known as "Dumas & Co." Some of his best works were plagiarized. For example, The Three Musketeers (1844) was taken from the Memoirs of Artagnan by an eighteenth-century writer, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) from Penchet's A Diamond and a Vengeance. At the end of his life, drained of money and sapped by his work, Dumas left Paris and went to live at his son's villa, where he remained until his death.

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