Black Count by Tom Reiss

I was looking for a biography of Alexandre Dumas when I came across Black Count by Tom Reiss. The book is about Thomas-Alexandre de la Pailleterie (Alexandre Dumas' father). He was born in 1762 to a black slave mother and a fugitive white French nobleman in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) where both sugar and coffee plantations were plentiful. He later became a general in the French Black Legion. Some of the inserts were taken from Alexandre Dumas' own memoirs about his father and it is clear that some of the tragedies that befall the Count of Monte Cristo were taken from his father's struggles because of his mixed race. He had conflicts with Napoleon who, with a smaller stature, (Alex Dumas was over 6 feet tall) felt inferior as many often mistook the General as Napoleon because of his warrior-like appearance. After commanding an army of nearly 50,000 and rising quickly through the ranks, when returning from Egypt he was captured, thrown into a dungeon and subjected to slow poisoning. He was released two years later but never recovered from his ordeal.
Note: There is a Monte Cristi Province in the Dominican Republic near the border of Haiti which may have been why Alexandre Dumas chose the name for his fictional island.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Most of us are familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo story, one of Alexandre Dumas' masterpieces, but I don't remember ever actually reading it before now.
I found this copy in the clearance section at Half Price Books and decided to plunge into the 450 pages of extremely small print.

Alexandre Dumas was a prolific writer with an interesting past (he was once a scribe to duc d'Orleans who became King Louise Philippe). At the height of his career, in Le Port-Marly, he built Chateau de Monte-Cristo along with another building as a writing study which he named Chateau d'If. The property is now a historic museum.

The story begins during the time that Napoleon Bonapart was exiled to the island of Elba and those who fought for Napoleon were being persecuted. (Napoleon later raised an army and became emperor of France once again for a mere 100 days). During this time, two jealous men who knew Edmond Dantes was innocently given the task of delivering a letter to a Bonapartist, used the information to have him arrested. He was imprisoned at the Chateau d'If where he met a priest who gave him the means to exact his revenge. The main theme running through The Count of Monte Cristo is that of revenge and cunning and the Count/Dantes has many aliases as do many of the characters which can be confusing. Also, some of the characters have titles and they are referred to by these rather than their name. To help to keep them straight look at the Cliff Notes Character List which explains each character and the names used for them.

Despite the time this was written, it is still a gripping story.

Chateau d'If prison (if means yew in English)