The Count of Monte Cristo: Timeless Classics

Written by Alexandre Dumas

Narrated by Saddleback Educational Publishing

On the night before his wedding, an innocent young man is arrested and imprisoned. How could such a thing have happened? When he finally discovers the truth, he bitterly plots revenge. Then he escapes of prison and begins to punish his enemies, one by one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781612475004

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) fue una figura dominante en la escena literaria del siglo XIX francés. Autor de novelas inolvidables, como El conde de Montecristo, Los tres mosqueteros, Veinte años después, El tulipán negro, La reina Margot o La guerra de las mujeres, su literatura de corte novelesco continúa viva en nuestro tiempo. Sus novelas se reeditan sin cesar y sus historias son adaptadas una y otra vez por la industria cinematográfica.

Reviews for The Count of Monte Cristo

[hanno_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best.The unabridged edition could definetely be one hundred pages shorter but even so this book kept me fully immersed and interested throughout it's nine hundred dense, small font pages.

[kassilem · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well. Let me state that I only just found out, after I finished the book, that I was reading the abridged version of this story. It explains a lot. This is another book that I signed up to read with a LT group read but never got to in the month LT was hosting the discussion. Truth be told I couldn’t find it on audio book and it took me a while to work up the courage to pull Cristo off the shelves and actually take the time to sit and read it. But I knew I wanted this book in my reading history. It took a while to finish because of a few things. First, I thought the story was a little unbelievable. Second there was much more ‘telling’ than ‘showing’. Thirdly, the count sort of started to grate on my nerves with his arrogance towards the end. But the fact that I was reading an abridged version of the novel may explain all of these problems. This version is probably a washed out version of the real deal. Grr. Now I need to go read the real version! But not so soon. Sometime in the future. Man, and I was wondering what all the raving about the book was for. Now I know that I wasn’t getting the same story as those who really like the book. *grumpy face* This version gets a three star. Someday in the future we’ll see how many stars the book really gets.

[pennsylady · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read in abridged audioImpeccable French...Covers all pertinent events acceptablyThis obviously is not for the hard core Monte Christo devotee.But it's wonderful for those of us that simply want to catch the story(again).

[bohemima · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just a rip-snorting good read; full of revenge, pathos, love, and adventure.

[bfertig_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all time favorite Classics! This just has the feeling of a TV series or a soap opera with the high drama and swashbuckling - fast paced action, unrequited love, treasure, it's all in there. It may look like a thumper, but it doesn't take long to get through!

[msf59 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I think just about everyone knows the basic storyline of Monte Cristo- Edmond Dantes an ambitious young sailor, moving up in the world, is on the verge of marrying the woman of his dreams. He is suddenly arrested for something he didn’t do, arranged by several men who would benefit from his imprisonment. He spends the next 14 years in a dungeon and begins to craft a revenge plot against these men. He is able to escape and is also told where to find an immense treasure buried on the island of Monte Cristo.
Honestly, I was daunted by the staggering length of this classic novel but I was soon swept away in Dumas’ narrative. It is so intricately plotted, as The Count slowly wreaks his revenge, that at times you cannot turn the pages fast enough. So many characters come and go, you may need to take notes. If you have not read this French tome yet, give it a try.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Edmond Dantes has it all: a good job, chance of promotion, and a lovely girl he plans to marry. But when two jealous men conspire to have his arrested as a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte, he loses everything and is imprisoned for years. Making a daring escape and coming into some money, he returns to get his revenge on the people who wronged him.

My Modern Library edition of [The Count of Monte Cristo] is a true doorstopper by all definitions, clocking in at 1462 pages, and it took me six weeks to read. That being said, this is a really excellent tale of human nature and revenge, and with all the different side stories of the various characters, I remained riveted throughout. It starts as almost a wish fulfillment - yes, Edmond, get back at the people who harmed you, they'll get what's coming to them! But it's much more nuanced than that. Edmond Dantes is changed by prison and while he may be more cunning, I would not say he's a better person. He sees himself as God's avenging angel and above the law, but some of his revenge tactics have unintended consequences and should leave him - and the reader - unsettled by what he's done. Deservedly a classic.

[infjsarah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Count of Monte Cristo has been on my TBR bucket list for a long time. Motivated by my real life Reading Group, we read it over 2 months in the summer. Or in my case I listened to it. I really enjoyed it. And actually found the end unexpected. The only bit where it dragged for me was the Italian section - I was puzzled as to what was going on and it went on too long. But once we are back in France, it whizzed along. I was glad to find an online outline of all the characters and their relation to each other (plus their many different names) - that helped massively.
Very enjoyable and I'd now love to see the new French language film version at some point.

[bookman09919 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my all-time favorite book. I have yet to find another book that so singly addresses revenge, love, loyalty and friendship with such ferocity or passion.

[judygibson-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a read-aloud by a local librarian and gave me something to look forward to every day during covid lockdown. It took 59 days to read; it is very long. (Good work, Christina!)

Colorful adventure story or meditation on providence and revenge? You decide. Although I must say, if you're going to punish those who done you wrong it certainly pays to be immensely wealthy.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved Edmond Dantes as a hero until his cruelty, the first of many, to the Nigerian man who became his slave.

[wanderlustlover_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am a massively, huge fan of "The Long Game" and any protagonist, evil or good, who does it at amazingly. Edmond Dantes is the master of the long game and this is the whole point of his story (not his two-a.m. saving grace).

I read this for someone dear to me and it took me off and on reading it for months, because it was really my at work lunch reading book. I got to keep her entertained with my endless commentary on it. And I stick by the two or three things I meant most that I said:


1. I love the story, but taking fifty-percent of your novel, in the very middle, to lead up to the exciting parts, does drag. A. Lot.

2. This novel nearly made me bitter with want to be in a class reading it. I even named my paper I would have written in that hypothetical class. Mice in the Garden: How the Smallest Decisions Makes the Largest Impacts.

3. The open ending is literally perfect. You don't need to know where it goes. Where it goes isn't the point. The point is in the words, and it beautiful, and its exquisite. And if it were written this way now it would have to be the hint to getting a sequel and I applaud the fact it's just a masterful ending.

[tnechodomu-421495 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm so glad I finally read this book. The story is truly epic, along the lines of other massive world-changing literary works like Don Quixote and Les Miserables but what I find the most engaging about this book is Dumas' writing style. The way he writes was one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced while reading a book. There were times when I re-read a paragraph or a page, not because of the content, but because I wanted to re-absorb the beauty of his lines. I find myself in absolute wonder after finishing this book.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an excellent book. I have so many thoughts. This is a delicious tale of revenge with fascinating characters, mystery, betrayal, rich portraits of high society in Rome and Paris at the time, and so many alter egos it would make anyone dizzy.
The first 200 pages or so focus on the betrayal and imprisonment of our protagonist, which is really the only time we get very close to him and his thoughts and plans. Once he escapes (that really can't be a spoiler, you've still 1000 pages left to go by then), he becomes elusive and mysterious even to the reader.
There were parts of this book that, while still great fun to read, felt like maybe we were losing the plot a bit, but sticking with them always brought us back to our story with greater insight into how everyone was connected. The chapters in Rome were a bit like that at first, and I am still scratching my head at the tales of the gang-raping bandits that were thrown in there, I don't think that was needed to introduce Vampa. Everyone has a rich and often salacious backstory, and we get all the details.
The revenge is fantastic because everyone's downfall was of their own making, secrets brought to light and dishonors uncovered. I suppose it would have been a much shorter book if they were all just killed after the prison escape.
I know it's a sign of the time it was written, but I did not like that the Count had slaves, or the circumstances of getting them, especially Ali. It seems that part of the immense wealth of the Count had to be shown through his possession of "exotic" things, and people....That certainly sours you to him for a while. He also is changed in his quest for revenge, and through parts of the story you start to wonder if he also turns into a villain in the end. I greatly enjoyed how the story was resolved, though I have to imagine Valentine is furious with the deception.
This is a classic I will revisit, I don't think I've enjoyed myself so much with a book in ages.

[tikimoof · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading the unabridged version meant that there were some parts that dragged at times (Benedetto's backstory in particular), but other than that, this book was very capable of hooking me in and staying fairly exciting through to the end.

[nx74defiant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Complex story. Multiple story lines. Edmond takes on multiple identities. Edmond Dantès is betrayed by multiple people due to jealousy, envy, a desire to protect their own interests.

[comfypants · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A wrongfully-imprisoned man unhatches an elaborate revenge scheme.3/4 (Good)If you want to spend a couple months reading the same book, this one's pretty good for that.(Sep. 2021)

[kittycunningh-815148 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Now, I want to watch a movie to see what they felt could be left out.

[jhemlock-1711 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an incredible story. The moral is quite simple. There are some people you just do not underestimate. I cannot begin to imagine what thoughts ran through our character's head while he slept at night or how he managed to keep things in enough order to stay ahead of those who wronged him. A sad heartbreaking story but also one of redemption.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wanted to read a classic after a number of detective books. A long haul of a book that is about 700 pages too long. Obvious w little to no character development w the first 300 pages interesting and th elast two hundred rushed. But a look at early 19th century France that was interesting and he did have some interesting scene descriptins and a rare insight or two.

[dhmontgomery-265379 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This justifiably famous masterpiece of plotting is best understood today, I think, as an ancestor of the modern superhero genre. The main character suffers a terrible trauma as a youth, at the hands of powers far greater then him, then by happenstance acquires superhuman powers of his own and uses them to seek out justice while concealing his identity. These tropes underly many famous comic book characters, and none moreso than Bruce Wayne/Batman, who similarly uses immense wealth to develop uncanny abilities.

Seen as a prototypical form of the superhero genre, many of the odder features of the book make perfect sense. Monte Cristo's uncanny abilities, which begin from but are by no means restricted to essentially unlimited wealth, are quasi-supernatural. He is surrounded by a host of more mundane sidekicks, who regularly need rescuing by the count's greater abilities. His enemies all have their own abilities and backstories (of whom the most interesting and capable is Villefort), as well as weaknesses that must be exploited to defeat them. Like the best exhibits of the superhero genre, Monte Cristo does not simply defeat his enemies, but suffers moral hazard in doing so, and must grapple with the ultimate morality of how he uses his powers; his final victory is not a clean one.

This also helps contextualize the reaction to Monte Cristo, which is often dismissed as a simple adventure book (never mind that the unabridged version contains repeated drug trips and gruesome violence), much as comic books are seen as juvenile. In fact, Dumas's masterpiece, like works such as Watchmen or The Killing Joke is best understood as a superlative example of a non-elite genre, which uses juvenile tropes to tell a more sophisticated story. (It is helped in this by the sheer weirdness of many passages in the unabridged version, which elevate it above a mere adventure yarn.)

[wearyhobo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was expecting more. Not more words or pages, because there were plenty of those, but more ... something. The story moves slowly, which isn't a fault in and of itself, but why does it proceed at so stately a pace? Mainly because Dumas insisted on showing us everything that was happening with every character: we don't just follow the Count, we follow the Morcerfs, Danglars, the Villeforts. This is really a problem in the second half of the book, in particular one section in the middle where we lose our protagonist for what must've been 100 pages. Just as in a revenge story, the protagonist needs a clear want (revenge), we need to actually be with that protagonist. In particular, it is unclear to me why we left the Count's POV. In the second half, we suddenly had little idea what he was thinking or feeling, after the first half being spent entirely inside his anguish, despair, depression, and rage. The first half made us care about the Count, made us want him to exact his revenge while not losing his essential goodness. It is only in the final pages where we move back to his POV and see him struggling to retain that goodness.

[jrthebutler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The classic story of an innocent man wrongly, but deliberately imprisoned and his brilliant strategy for revenge against those who betrayed him.

[leslie398 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

2021 review: reread via BPL audiobook
This unabridged audiobook narrated by John Lee made me bump up my previous rating from 4.5* to 5*. This (very) long novel reminded a bit of Victor Hugo in places with long digressions into minor characters' stories, though being Dumas even these were generally pretty exciting.

While I have enjoyed several film adaptations, none of them have the complexity of the novel (and most make some sort of significant change to either plot or character). I am so glad that I decided to reread this and in an unabridged edition!

[aront-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hadn’t read this book in decades, although it was one of my teenage favorites. I was wondering if it would stand the test of time.

First, the Penguin Classics translation by Robin Buss is magnificent, and makes clear many points older translations make fuzzy. While as the translator’s introduction points out, this book is now relegated to the YA category, this is in fact an adult book, with very adult themes.

While Dumas is perhaps one of the first great masters of genre fiction, this book transcends that classification. Besides being a riveting story, it is also a brilliant and unsurpassed meditation on human nature, right action, justice and revenge and the ethical ambiguity & complexity of all these.

Read this book and this translation. Despite the books length you will find it hard.to put down and have much to ponder after reading it.

[ghr4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is simply one of the greatest novels in all of literature. It is an epic tale of adventure and intrigue, betrayal and revenge, mischief and murder, romance and redemption. It is a remarkably long and complex story with myriad characters that manages to hold one’s interest and still leave the reader yearning for more even at the end of its nearly 1,250 pages. The unabridged Penguin Classics edition with Robin Buss’s smooth translation and solid Introduction is the easily the version of choice. This is a book to be savored, with re-readings certain to deepen one’s appreciation; however, I will not watch any of the film adaptations, as they are sure to pale in comparison, and will inevitably alter the matchless mind’s-eye visuals that the book has created.

[danielstj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A flawed yet still worthwhile masterpiece that shows the prowess of Dumas in creating a character that seems, and feels, real.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I so was not expecting this book to so... fun. It is a near perfect book for what it is - drama, love, action, revenge, kindness, absurdity. You should totally read this book.

Don't be afraid of the label of classic! Or that it is about a man in prison who escapes and gets revenge on those who put him there. Its not a dark story at all. It reminds me an Errol Flynn movie - where everybody is exactly what they seem, the good guys win, the bad guys get punished, and everybody lives the life they deserve at the end.

But, the book isn't perfect - there is some aspects that are quite a stretch to believe. For example, Dante become an educated man by talking to a priest in the next cell over. Or how a ship was completely recreated, cargo and all. Or how the Count has a seemingly unending supply of money. There are a few ethical issues that will cause modern audiences some trepidation. The Count has a few slaves, even though slavery is illegal in France. Or his treatment of Mercedes - was she really suppose to wait for him for all the years he was gone?

[amerynth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" and am very thankful a monthly challenge prompted me to pick this book up, as it really wasn't on my radar. It turned out to be right up my alley and the type of book I really enjoy.

The book centers on Edmond Dantes, a 19-year-old French sailor whose enemies get the better of him, leaving him in jail for over a decade before he makes his escape. Dantes becomes obsessed with meting out justice -- revenge against those who destroyed his life, and favor for those who remained loyal.

There are some great twists and turns (as well as some tangents, but I didn't really mind them) in this book and I enjoyed seeing where Dantes' efforts for retribution landed. I thought this was a pretty fun read overall.

[skateboard34-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fantastic story of retribution and revenge. I took the plunge reading the unabridged version and although it took a while to get into, I couldn't stop reading once the Count had been fully unleashed. I kept expecting negative things to happen to the protagonist but instead, pure revenge. It was great to read through and this one-sided dynamic didn't get boring at all.