The Black Count: Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo - Softcover
Who was the real Count of Monte Cristo? In this extraordinary biography, Tom Reiss traces the almost unbelievable life of the man who inspired not only Monte Cristo, but all three of the Musketeers: the novelist's own father. Born in St Dominigue in 1762, the son of a French nobleman and a sugar plantation slave, General Alexandre Dumas did not have an auspicious start in life. Things got worse when his father sold him into slavery to pay his passage back to Normandy. But six months later, Dumas' fortunes changed. His father bought him out of slavery and raised him in France, where Dumas went to the nation's finest schools and fencing academies, and having enrolled in the army became known as France's most handsome and strongest soldier. By the time Napoleon invaded Egypt, Dumas was his top cavalry commander. But Napoleon was threatened by the physical prowess and popularity of this black nobleman. He engineered his disgrace and imprisonment, and to please the sugar growers reintroduced slavery. A brief flowering of freedom and equality was over and forgotten, but Dumas' legacy would live on in the novels of the son who adored him. Reiss tells this tale with magisterial authority. Long years of research have led him across Europe, the Caribbean and the Middle East in search of forgotten documents. He has journeyed through the Alps where Dumas scaled unscalable ice cliffs. He has walked the streets of Cairo where Dumas' intrepid cavalry charge is still remembered. The result is an enthralling book that entertains, astounds and triumphantly resurrects a lost hero from the world's first multiracial society.
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Review:
"A highly enjoyable mingling of scholarship and sleuthing." Paul Theroux "A wonderous tale, beautifully told...mesmerising, poignant and almost incredible." New York Times
Book Description:
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2013. Reiss, like the novelist Dumas before him, triumphantly resurrects a lost hero - General Alexandre Dumas, the real count of Monte Cristo.
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- PublisherHarvill Secker
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 1846556627
- ISBN 13 9781846556623
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages432
- Rating
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The Black Count : Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Published by
Penguin Random House
(2012)
ISBN 10: 1846556627
ISBN 13: 9781846556623
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Softcover
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Book Description Condition: Good. Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 19228406-20
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The Black Count
Published by
Harvill Secker
(2012)
ISBN 10: 1846556627
ISBN 13: 9781846556623
Used
Paperback
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo - a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature. Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution, in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat. The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world's first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son. 414 pages. Seller Inventory # 1549056
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