Product Description

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. A huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s, Dumas was inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment when writing his epic tale of suffering and retribution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6044 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-27
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1312 pages

About the Author
Alexandre Dumas (1824-95) was a pioneer of the Romantic theatre in France, for which he wrote a series of colourful historical dramas, although it is as a novelist that he is best known today. His works include The Three Musketeers (1844-5), La Reine Margot (1845). Robin Buss is a journalist and translator.

Customer Reviews

Classic novel, excellent translation
Dumas's dazzling, epic tale of a man seeking revenge following the ruination of his life is a thrilling read, despite being (in this edition) more than 1200 pages long. This edition is to be particularly recommended as it features a very fine recent translation, which reads very well and which also picks up on a few of the subtleties lost in the "classic" Victorian version of this novel.

Edmond Dantes is a man who, to use a cliche - has it all. He is young and just beginning to see success in his career, and has a beautiful fiance with whom he is madly in love. However, his world falls apart when he is thrown into prison on trumped-up treason charges and the world forgets about him - his father dies in poverty; his fiance, thinking he is lost to her forever, eventually marries another man. And Edmond himself spends years languishing in jail, coming close to insanity, before he meets another prisoner who gives him the skills and the courage to think about escaping and tracking down the men responsible for ruining his life...

"The Count of Monte Cristo" is an astounding novel in terms of its scope and its subject matter. We are led across Europe and through the lives of a wide cast of characters, seeing how their fates unfold over their lifetimes. The novel is also remarkable for dealing with some surprising subjects (if we consider the time it was written), including drug use and lesbianism, not to mention a murderer who is steadily working their way through an entire family.

The book does have a few problems - as other reviewers have mentioned, the Rome section drags. It also might be difficult for us to believe in the transformation Dantes has made from a young, hopeful, naive young man into an embittered, worldy gentleman hell-bent on revenge, as we are not really shown how this metamorphosis is achieved other than to see how badly Dantes suffers in his years in prison. There is also Mercedes's character - she is central to the plot, but we never really get to know her and this makes it more difficult for us to empathise with her difficulties and decisions.

Nevertheless, for all its flaws, this novel remains captivating, and it is one of my favourite books. It is just such a brilliantly good read, with so many things happening, so many great characters and also some really quite profound things to say about life, love and happiness. Not perfect, but a 5-star novel nonetheless because Dumas successfully tells a great story, makes the reader think and creates an entire world within "The Count of Monte Cristo", one I personally was sorry to leave on the final page.

Excelent Translation
This edition has a recent translation. I found the clasic translation quite heavy going to read. I switched early to this edition and instantly found it much more enjoyable. This newer traslation also seems more subtle and mature. The notes are helpful and explain many of the refrences and avoid pointing out obvious details. In addition, the introduction is very good.

The Count of Monte Cristo
This is an amazing book; having just finished university I wanted to read something other than facts and theories and this was an excellent choice as the characters are skillfully crafted and the places are sumptuously described. Despite its length this book is not a chore to read as the chapters are relatively short and the chapter index helps to jog the readers' memory of previous events (so don't skim through it before reading if you want to be surprised). It also manages to maintain the readers' interest due to the number of characters and incidents; it was like reading an action movie whilst all the while being aware that each event not only added drama and realism but was also part of Dantes plot for revenge.