The Count of Monte Cristo￯﾿ﾽa bestseller since its initial publication￯﾿ﾽis the story of a daring prison break, a tale of betrayal and redemption, and a swashbuckling romance.

Dashing young Edmond Dantès has everything. He is engaged to a beautiful woman, is about to become the captain of a ship, and is well liked by almost everyone. But his perfect life is shattered when he is falsely accused of treason by a jealous rival and thrown into a dark prison cell for fourteen years.￯﾿ﾽ

To avenge himself against his enemies, Dantès masquerades as a refined nobleman, the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. As Dumas writes, "Everything about the Count seemed to have its meaning and value, for the habit of profitable thinking had given an incomparable ease and firmness to his features, to the expression of his face, and to his slightest gesture."

Written in Dumas￯﾿ﾽs oft-imitated style of adventure and suspense and filled with vivid details of post-Napoleonic France, The Count of Monte Cristo continues to dazzle readers with its thrilling and memorable scenes, including Dantès￯﾿ﾽs miraculous escape from the dreadful Ch￯﾿ﾽteau d￯﾿ﾽIf, his amazing discovery of a vast hidden treasure, and his transformation into a man whose astonishing thirst for vengeance is as cruel as it is just.


Introduction and Notes by Luc Sante
The author of Low Life, Evidence, and The Factory of Facts, Luc Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writer￯﾿ﾽs Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Grammy (for album notes), and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is Visiting Professor of Writing and the History of Photography at Bard College. He lives with his wife and son in Ulster County, New York.

Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24, 1802, in Villers-Cotter￯﾿ﾽts, a town northeast of Paris. Despite his limited education, Dumas found his true métier with the birth of the roman feuilleton, or serial novel, in the 1840s. Les Trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), published in the press from 1843 to 1844, was an overwhelming success that instantly established Dumas as a master of the genre. Dumas￯﾿ﾽs celebrity status redoubled with the publication of the enormously popular Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo) in 1844.


"No one pretends that the works of Dumas are high literature, or that he stands up to comparisons with Balzac, Hugo, Stendhal, or Flaubert. Nothing in his books encourages reflection, or forces recognition, or sounds significant depths. On the other hand, he had a genius for giving pleasure, and for ensnaring the attention of the reader. Once past the initial rumblings of the machinery, his books move into high gear and do not quit; to adapt a phrase applied to another writer, it is harder to stop reading his books than it is to start them."￯﾿ﾽfrom the Introduction by Luc Sante