On the day of his wedding Edmond Dantes master mariner is arrested in Marseille on trumped-up charges & spirited away to the cellars of the Chateau d' If an impregnable sea fortress in which he is imprisoned indefinitely. Escaping from the chateau by a series of daring manoeuvres he unearths a great treasure on the island of Monte Cristo buried there by a former fellow prisoner who bequeaths to him the secret of its whereabouts. Thus armed with unimaginable wealth & embittered by his long imprisonment he resolves to devote his life to tracking down & punishing those responsible. This classic nineteenth-century translation has been revised & updated by Peter Washington with an introduction by award-winning novelist Umberto Eco.