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Zusatztext 73819749 Informationen zum Autor TOM REISS is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author o f The Black Count and the author of the celebrated international bestseller The Orientalist . His biographical pieces have appeared The New Yorker , The New York Times and other publications. He makes his home in New York City. Klappentext PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “richly imagined biography” ( The New York Times Book Review ) of General Alex Dumas, who rose from slavery to command vast armies in the French Revolutionary Wars—and whose exploits were immortalized in his son’s novels The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers “Fascinating [and] entertaining.”— The Wall Street Journal “Remarkable.”— The Boston Globe “A truly amazing story.”—NPR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The New Republic, NPR, Salon, Essence General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers . But hidden behind General Dumas’s swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave—who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies of more than 50,000 men at the height of the Revolution. No matter how high he soared, Dumas continued to live by his blade and his boldness in the face of overwhelming odds. Yet, because of his unwavering principles, he ultimately became a threat to Napoleon himself. Time magazine called The Black Count “one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible.” It is also a window into the modern world’s first multiracial society and a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 1 the sugar factory Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie—father of the future Alex Dumas—was born on February 26, 1714, in the Norman province of Caux, a region of rolling dairy farms that hung above great chalk cliffs on the northwest coast of France. A scrawled scrap of paper from the time states that he was baptized “without ceremony, at home, because of the peril of death,” suggesting he was too sickly to risk bringing in to the local church. He was the firstborn son of an old family that possessed a castle, a scarcity of cash, and an abundance of conniving members, though Antoine would one day outdo them all. The boy survived, but the following year his sovereign, King Louis XIV, the Sun King, died after seventy-two years on the throne. As he lay dying, the old king counseled his heir, his five-year-old great-grandson: “I loved war too much, do not imitate me in this, nor in my excessive spending habits.” The five-year-old presumably nodded earnestly. His reign, as Louis XV, would be marked by a cycle of spending and wars so extravagantly wasteful and unproductive that they would bring shame not only on his person but on the institution of the French monarchy itself. But the profligate, war-driven habits of its kings could not hold France back. In fact the “Great Nation” was about to unleash the age of the philosophes, the Enlightenment, and all that would follow from it. Frenchmen were about to shake the world into the modern age. Before they could do that, they would need money. Big money. Big money was not to be found in Normandy, and certainly not around the Pailleterie château. The family’s coat of arms—three golden ea...
A propos de l'auteur
TOM REISS is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author o
f The Black Count and the author of the celebrated international bestseller
The Orientalist. His biographical pieces have appeared
The New Yorker,
The New York Times and other publications. He makes his home in New York City.
