Edmond Dantès, falsely imprisoned for fourteen years, escapes, discovers buried treasure, and systematically destroys the men who betrayed him. Alexandre Dumas père published this in serial form in 1844, and it remains the great revenge narrative, the fantasy of return with unlimited power and knowledge. The plot is intricate; the characters vivid; the suspense unfailing across over a thousand pages. It is a novel about justice, patience, and the discovery that revenge, once achieved, does not satisfy as we had hoped.