The Count of Monte Cristo: Introduction by Umberto Eco

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING PIERRE NINEY • A stunning hardcover edition of Dumas’s epic novel of justice, retribution, and self-discovery—one of the most enduringly popular adventure tales ever written—in a newly revised translation. Featuring an introduction by Umberto Eco.

This beloved novel tells the story of Edmond Dantès, wrongfully imprisoned for life in the supposedly impregnable sea fortress, the Château d’If. After a daring escape, and after unearthing a hidden treasure revealed to him by a fellow prisoner, he devotes the rest of his life to tracking down and punishing the enemies who wronged him.

Though a brilliant storyteller, Dumas was given to repetitions and redundancies; this slightly streamlined version of the original 1846 English translation speeds the narrative flow while retaining most of the rich pictorial descriptions and all the essential details of Dumas’s intricately plotted and thrilling masterpiece.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Everyman’s Library Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS was born in 1802 in France. His father, a general in Napoleon's army, died when Dumas was three years old, leaving Dumas and his mother impoverished. When he turned twenty-one, Dumas moved to Paris, where he worked for the powerful duc d'Orléans. He wrote popular plays and then novels, including The Three Musketeers. In 1851, he fled from his creditors to Brussels and then to Russia, and in 1861, he joined the fight to unite Italy, founding the revolutionary newspaper L'Indipendente. He died in 1870.

UMBERTO ECO is the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. He died in 2016 in Milan.