The Count of Monte Cristo

First published in serial form in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo is Alexandre Dumas’s sweeping tale of betrayal, imprisonment and revenge, set against the shifting political and social landscape of nineteenth-century France. When the young sailor Edmond Dantès is falsely accused of treason, he is imprisoned in the Château d’If, where an extraordinary friendship with the Abbé Faria transforms his understanding of the world and opens the possibility of escape. Years later, armed with immense wealth and a new identity, Dantès returns as the enigmatic Count of Monte Cristo, determined to confront those who destroyed his former life. His elaborate plans unfold through drawing rooms, Mediterranean islands and the glittering society of Paris, where justice and vengeance become increasingly difficult to distinguish.

A defining work of nineteenth-century adventure fiction, The Count of Monte Cristo combines intricate plotting and dramatic reversals with enduring questions about mercy, ambition, fate and the moral cost of revenge. Written with the collaboration of Auguste Maquet, the novel exemplifies the French roman-feuilleton, whose serial form invited readers into a world of suspense, secrets and unexpected revelations. Yet beneath its pleasures as a tale of escape and retribution lies a more troubling portrait of a man who risks becoming consumed by the very justice he seeks to deliver. Nearly two centuries after its first appearance, Dumas’s novel remains a richly imagined exploration of power, identity and the possibility of beginning life anew.

From the book

“I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”

— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

On The Count of Monte Cristo

“The Count of Monte Cristo remains compulsively readable.”

— Imogen Russell Williams, The Guardian