Black Count

Product Description

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 novelists own father. Born in St Dominigue in 1762 the son of a French nobleman & 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 & raised him in France where Dumas went to the nations finest schools & fencing academies & having enrolled in the army became known as Frances most handsome & strongest soldier. By the time Napoleon invaded Egypt Dumas was his top cavalry commander. But Napoleon was threatened by the physical prowess & popularity of this black nobleman. He engineered his disgrace & imprisonment & to please the sugar growers reintroduced slavery. A brief flowering of freedom & equality was over & 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 & 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 & triumphantly resurrects a lost hero from the worlds first multiracial society.