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Book Description
Introduction by Lorenzo Carcaterra
A popular bestseller since its publication in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great page-turning thrillers of all time. Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, Alexandre Dumas’s grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantès, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason. The story of his long imprisonment, dramatic escape, and carefully wrought revenge offers up a vision of France that has become immortal. As Robert Louis Stevenson declared, “I do not believe there is another volume extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance.”
INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDE
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Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Consider the translation!,
By
This review is from: The Count of Monte Cristo (Paperback)
This particular translation was the most visible at a particular Border's (as well as on Amazon), and I almost bought it. However, I had time to kill, and so I read the first three pages from several other translations: it really made a difference. I opted for the Penguin Classics edition trans. by Robin Buss, which I found to be both clear and faithful. This frickin book is well over 1,000 pages, so it may be worth your while to sit down in the bookstore and investigate for a few minutes.p.s. Look out for the sneaky abridged versions, too.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revenge is a dish best served cold,
By
This review is from: Penguin Classics Count Of Monte Cristo (Paperback)
Edmond Dantes was a happy and fortunate young man, blessed with a beautiful fiance, good looks, and an upwardly mobile career. In short he had everything that a man could want. As is always the case, one man's fortune breeds another's envy. Jealous of Edmond's good fortunes three of his friends conspire to remove him from the scene. The plan might not have worked were it not for his bad fortune in chief prosecutors. His fortunes soured, Edmond is sentenced to life imprisonment.What follows along this plotline is one of the greatest novels ever written. Edmond escapes, finds his fortune, and begins a long road of revenge. Not satisfied with killing his enemies, Edmond instead seeks to do unto them as they have done unto him. Ruin their lives by taking away everything that they hold dear. I cannot emphasize enough the quality of this book. The plot is complex and intriguing. The characters are deep and fully fleshed. Always intelligent, often whimsical, occassionally romantic, and interspersed with action, this novel has something for everyone. Read this book!!!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Dish Best Served Cold,
By Doginfollow (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Count of Monte Cristo (Paperback)
The introduction to this excellent Modern Library edition says, "The long journey of Edmond Dantes is one that we should all take at some point in our lives." I couldn't agree more. This novel easily ranks among the greatest epics--The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, War & Peace and The Brothers Karamazov come to mind as works of comparable scope and moral grandeur.My only advice is: set aside some time. With 1500 pages, a complex web of characters (including many with shifting identities) and more than a few dispensible subplots, this unabridged edition is a challenge--albeit a rewarding one. The novel tackles all the great themes: war, revolution, love, power, money, justice, evil, God. But in a word, it's subject is REVENGE. A good-natured young man of exceptional promise, Edmond Dantes is betrayed by his erstwhile friends, unjustly imprisoned by an ambitious magistrate, and left for dead by the woman he loves. The first three hundred pages of the story are fast-paced and almost cinematic, from the wrenching scenes of betrayal and imprisonment, down to Dantes' miraculous escape and rebirth as a remarkable new man, the Count of Monte Cristo. The Count is part 007, part Stoic philosopher. He'll drop you in a duel, match wits with you in the salon, concoct potions from recipes in a dozen languages, be in three places at once, with three different identities, and exercise a kind of foresight and control over human events that we normally associate with gods and conspiracy theories. Oh yeah--and he's loaded, too. Dantes burns with a desire for revenge, but it's an entirely different sort than the Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson variety. Instead of blasting his way into Paris with a semi-automatic (or less anachronistically, with a really big sword), Dantes methodically plots the downfall of his enemies using even more lethal weapons: the evil that lurks in their own hearts. All this takes a long time. There is a big drop off in intensity in the middle chunk of the novel, as Dumas transitions from the swashbuckling Napoleonic days to a more traditional European novel of manners set in the 1830s. A whole new set of characters are introduced. Later, we discover their relationship to Dantes' earlier antagonists--but for a time we are totally at sea. Meanwhile, Dumas launches various digressions that will occasionally cause the reader to wonder whether he was getting paid by the word (probably). But don't despair. The last half of the novel gathers steam like a freight train, as Count of Monte Cristo moves in for the kill. The suspense builds--not because we wonder whether Dantes will get his revenge, but whether he can avoid turning into a monster in the process. Ultimately, Dumas offers as sane and humane a message as you can hope for from 1500 pages of injustice and vengeance. In a novel where fortunes shift, names and titles are granted and extinguished, and identities are transformed on turns of luck, the old Stoic wisdom shines through. It's not what happens to you, good or bad, but how you respond to it, that determines true virtue in this world. One suspects this would be true even without an avenging Providence, even if Edmond Dantes' triumph were less complete.
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