A young sailor on the happiest day of his life, his promotion secured and his wedding hours away, is arrested on a false charge of treason and buried alive in a fortress off the coast of Marseilles, where he will spend fourteen years learning patience, languages, and the precise geography of revenge. Alexandre Dumas published this novel in serial instalments beginning in 1844, and its length is not excess but architecture, a vast machinery of justice that requires every gear. Edmond Dantès emerges from prison as a different man, wealthy beyond measure and cold with purpose. The pleasure of the book is not in the violence of retribution but in its choreography, each betrayer undone by the very weakness that made him betray.