By the author of the internationally bestselling biography The Orientalist, The Black Count brings to life one of history’s great forgotten heroes: a man almost unknown today yet with a personal story that is strikingly familiar.  His swashbuckling exploits appear in The Three Musketeers, and his triumphs and ultimate tragic fate inspired The Count of Monte Cristo. His name is Alex Dumas.  Father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas, Alex has become, through his son’s books, the model for a captivating modern protagonist: the wronged man in search of justice.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.  Drawing on hitherto unknown documents, letters, battlefield reports and Dumas’ handwritten prison diary, The Black Count is a groundbreaking masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.