Product Description

Set during the French Revolution, the tale of the man "who was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #435063 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From the Back Cover
‘One wonders if there is another storyteller so adroit at filling his pages with intrigue and counter-intrigue, with danger threaded with romance, with a background of lavish colour, of silks and velvets, of swords and jewels’Daily Telegraph

When Andre-Louis witnesses the murder of his best friend by an arrogant and privileged aristocrat he swears to avenge his death. Falling in with a travelling theatre company he disguises himself as the character of the wily rogue Scaramouche.His ensuing adventures involve hair-raising duels, romance, treachery and shocking family secrets all handled with brilliance and wit by this extraordinary hero.

About the Author
Rafael Sabatini was born in Jesi, Italy in 1875 to an English mother and Italian father, both renowned opera singers. At a young age, Rafael travelled frequently, and could speak six languages fluently by the age of seventeen. After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini turned to writing. He worked prolifically, writing short stories in the 1890s, with his first novel published in 1902. Scaramouche was published in 1921 to widespread acclaim, and was soon followed by the equally succesful Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk. He died on February 13, 1950 in Switzerland.

Customer Reviews

Good - but perfect?
Warning: this is not a pure swashbuckler. It goes a lot deeper than, say, "Captain Blood".
I'm not sure why this seems to be so widely regarded as Sabatini's greatest work. It's a damn good read and I enjoyed it, but it does slow down a lot in the middle, and explanations of the politics of the time tend to lead him into digressions from the actual story. It's also a little too episodic - the three parts, "The Robe", "The Buskin" and "The Sword", just don't seem to hang together well enough.
That said, the ending was extremely powerful. True, of the two shock-twists, I had foreseen the less shocking one from the moment the character involved appeared, but the other really hit me. And while I'd rather he'd linked the little history lessons a bit better with the story (as he did in "The Marquis of Carabas" and "The Trampling of the Lilies", both also dealing with the French Revolution), I can't deny that this is an excellent novel.

Sabatini's masterpiece
"He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad," so begins Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini's 1921 novel set during the French Revolution. That single and unforgettable sentence propelled me back to my childhood and awoke in me nostalgia for the excitement and adventure I once held for books and movies.

Scaramouche is a tale of revenge, an astonishing tour de force - every single page seethes with incident, color, and detail. How could it no be? It is the story of a man born on the wrong side of the blanket, fugitive from the King's justice, star of traveling players, and the finest swordsman in all of France. A tale of revenge and revolution.

Scaramouche helped me rediscover everything I loved about the classic swashbucklers of the 40s starring Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn and Robert Donat. Sabatini also led me to other great tales of adventure by Alexandre Dumas, PC Wren, Emilio Salgari Henry Rider Haggard and Samuel Shellabarger. Scaramouche definitely has a special place in my heart ;)

A very interesting book
This book looks on the surface like another adventure book, but beside being a good adventure book, it's also a historical document about the time of French revolution which also has very interesting remarks about the human race. I believe that it has a little from every geanre: action, comedy, philosophy and drama. I think that it is the best work of Rafael Sabatini, the creator of captain Blood.