Alexandre Dumas: "The Count of Monte Cristo"This is the classic story of the revenge of justice. The young seamate Edmond Dantès is in 1815 innocently accused for being a traitor and is sentenced to imprisonment in the dreadful prison at Chateau d'If, where he remains for 14 years. But in the prison he gets acquainted with "the crazy vicar" Abbot Faria who is in the act of planning to escape and also knows about an enormous treasure that shall be buried somewhere on the desert island of Monte Christo. His attempt to escape is unforunately no success, and when Faria understands he is going to die in the prison, he confides young Edmond with the more consise wherabouts as to where the treasure is hidden. When Faria dies, Edmond succeeds in escaping by changing his position with the one of the corpse, in the sack where the guards has put it before they are going to throw it out from the rock where the prison lies, into the foaming waves among the rocks deep down under. Miracolously Edmond survives this fall and is being picked up by a a smuggler's wessel. Several months later he also succeeds in taking himself to Monte Christo, climbing up on its rocky shore and finding and digging up the treasure. He then sails back home to Marseille to find that his father in the meantime has diseased. He spends a minor part of the treasure to buy the island of Monte Christo, a Count title and a yacht where he hides the remains of the treasure. Thereafter he goes to Paris to find the persons that had betrayed him and got him sent innocently in prison, and to bring down his revenge onm them. I think I was about 12-13 years when I read this story. I got completely obsessed with it, it was the most thrilling story I had ever read. If I were to give one book the honour of making me a person fond of reading, I guess it must be this one. I think I first read "Monte Christo" and in the following months threw myself over the other most famous of Duma's novels, that is all the books about the three musketeers and d'Artagnan. This is altogether ten volumes, each on several hundred pages. They are all warmly recommended if you like thrilling stories. Alexandre Dumas was born in 1802 and died in 1870. He is reckoned to be the best selling french authors through all times, and wrote an abundance of novels besides the ones described here, and they have been translated to more than hundred languages. Both the stories of Monte Christo and of the Musketeers have been the subject for a number of movies up through the times. |
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