Translated from French by Robin Buss
Published by Penguin, 1996, 1276 pages. Original version serialized in 1844-46 and published as a book in 1846. First unabridged translation by Emma Hardy, 1846.

France, 1815. Napoleon is in exile, but has escaped from Elba. The Bourbons are on the throne. France is divided between the Bonapartists, who secretly support Napoleon, and the royalists, who support the king.

Edmond Dantès is First Mate on the Pharaon, a merchant ship. The owner of the ship, Morrel, is impressed with Edmond’s handling of the ship after Captain Leclère dies on the voyage, and tells Edmond he is promoting him to captain.

Life is going well: at only 19, Edmond is about to be made captain of his own ship and is engaged to Mercédès, whom he adores. What could possibly go wrong?

Something does go wrong and spectacularly. There are two men who do not want Edmond to succeed: the Pharaon’s second mate, Danglars, who resents his success; and Fernand, who is hopelessly in love with Mercédès and wants to marry her.

Edmond’s undoing is that Leclère, before dying, made Edmond promise to deliver a package to a general who was with Napoleon. The general in turn entrusts Edmond with a letter to Nortier, a Bonapartist. Danglars sees an opportunity to rid himself of his rival, and writes an anonymous letter to the authorities, accusing Edmond of treason, passing it off as a joke to his companions, while instigating Fernand to actually send it. The result is that Edmond is arrested on the day of his engagement.

He comes up before Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor, to whom he tells the whole story. Villefort is at first sympathetic to the prisoner, but as soon as Edmond hands him the letter to Nortier, he knows that he cannot free him. Nortier is Villefort’s father and if it is discovered that his father was on Napoleon’s side, Villefort’s career would be ruined.

So Edmond is incarcerated in a cell in the dungeons of the notorious Château d’If, a prison on an island. The appeals made by Edmond’s father, Mercédès, and Morrel to free him are ignored, and Edmond spends the next 14 years there.

But the 14 years are not entirely wasted. There is another prisoner in the dungeons, Abbé Faria, a scholar and priest, who is written off as crazy by the guards. The Abbé spends years digging an escape tunnel but ends up in Edmond’s cell instead. The two men become friends, and the Abbé teaches Edmond everything he knows. His final gift to Edmond is the secret of buried treasure on the uninhabited island of Monte Cristo, a treasure that he inherited from a family he worked with.

When the Abbé dies, Edmond escapes, pretending to be the dead Abbé. But the Château d’If has no graveyards. The dead are weighed down with a cannonball and thrown into the sea. Edmond manages to break free and is rescued by pirates. In the meantime, news of his escape and supposed death reach the mainland. When he eventually returns to France, Edmond discovers that his father was allowed to die of starvation, and Mercédès has married Fernand, who is now a rich man, as is Danglars.

While he is with the pirates, Edmond finds his way to Monte Cristo and the treasure. Now, with more wealth than he could have ever imagined, and with the news of his death freeing him, Edmond remakes himself as the Count of Monte Cristo, and goes back to Europe to wreak revenge on the men who put him away, and reward those who stood by him. But nothing ever works out quite as planned, and Edmond, while carrying out his revenge, also finds his humanity.

For a book that is over 1200 pages long, I found it difficult to put down. It seldom flags, and the story is compelling. The Count is clever, manipulative and a master of disguise. His ability to speak several languages (thanks to the Abbé) allows him to move in various circles. And his plans for revenge are effective: he does not actually kill anyone—he merely destroys people by using their own failings against them.

The canvas is sprawling: there are the main characters, but by the time the Count emerges, they have adult children, each with their own stories. And then there is the historical backdrop—the change of regimes in France between the kings and Napoleon.

The novel draws on two actual incidents: one of Pierre Picaud, who was falsely accused and imprisoned and took revenge on his enemies after his release. The other is of Alexander Dumas’s own father, the son of a Marquis and a Haitian slave and a general in the French army, who fell foul of Napoleon and was imprisoned in Italy for two years (see my review of Tom’s Reiss’s biography of General Dumas).

Sometimes the book requires a suspension of disbelief, but the Count is such a wonderful character, that I had no problem with that. He is almost like a superhero of his day (although without any magical powers). There seems to be nothing that he cannot do, and do well. Also, there is something about a revenge story: you really want to see Danglers, Fernand, and Villiers get their comeuppance.

The translation by Robin Buss is excellent and makes it very readable. I took the book with me on a trip that involved a 6-hour train journey there and back, and the hours just flew by. When I finally finished it, I felt disappointed that I would be leaving all these characters behind.

This is a book you can lose yourself in. I have only just discovered it, and wish that I had read it earlier—it is one that I would have liked to have read at different stages of my life, because I am sure it would have resonated with me in different ways.

Don’t let the size put you off. As a friend of mine put it, it’s a cracking read!