(from the back of the book)
The hero of The Black Count is a man almost unknown today,
yet his swashbuckling exploits appear in The Three Musketeers, and his triumphs
and ultimate tragic fate inspired The Count of Monte Cristo. His name is Alex Dumas. Father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas, Alex
has become, through his son’s books, the model for a captivating modern
protagonist: the wronged man in search of justice.
Born to a black slave mother and a fugitive white French
nobleman in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into
bondage but then made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a
sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy and, after a meteoric rise
through the army of the French Republic, given command of 53,000 men. It was after his subsequent heroic service as
Napoleon’s cavalry commander that Dumas was captured and cast into a dungeon –
and a harrowing ordeal commenced that inspired one of the world’s classic works
of fiction.
The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure, a
lushly textured evocation of eighteenth-century France, a window into the
modern world’s first multiracial society, and a heartbreaking story of the
enduring bonds of love between a father and son.
It turns out that Alexandre Dumas used his own father as inspiration
for his stories. And it also turns out
that his father was a very interesting person.
This very carefully researched book actually starts out with the
novelist’s grandfather, who happened to be a French count. So you get to see the entire life of Alex
Dumas from being sold by his own father, to becoming a renowned solider
fighting with Napoleon, to dropping into obscurity. He lived through a very interesting time in
French history and had many adventures along the way so his life truly reads like
one of his son’s novels without needing any embellishment. Because of his mixed heritage, race relations
in France are an important part of the book and they take an interesting course
though time. I didn’t know anything
about Alex Dumas before I read this book so I obviously learned a lot about him
but I also learned things about French history in general that I didn’t know
before. Quite apart from the role he
played in history you would think that his story would be better known simply
because it is such a good story, with action, courage, duels, romance and so
much more. This is a good book for you
if you are interested in French history or if you are just interested in Dumas’
novels, because you can truly see his father in his works.
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