Book Review: The Black Count by Tom Reiss

The Black Count (2012) by Tom Reiss tells the extraordinary true story of General Alex Dumas, the

forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. The man is virtually unknown today but his story still resonates because his son Alexandre Dumas used it to create some of the best-loved heroes of literature. The story of his father, of mixed racial and cultural heritage born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) to a slave mother and a French nobleman father, is almost completely lost to history solely due to his race.

 But Reiss brings this remarkable man to life in The Black Count. The book is brilliantly researched and the author draws on the material Alexandre Dumas incorporated into his own novels and memoir. The work explores the life of his from the time he arrived in France, through his schooling as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy and his subsequent rise from a lowly private in the dragoons to a respected general who marched into Egypt at Napoleon’s side.

 Dumas came of age at a unique time in history during the French Revolution, a brief period of equality in the French empire. During this period numerous opportunities arose for the son of a slave that would not have emerged 20 years before or even 20 years later. Dumas, a dynamic individual of tremendous courage and physical gifts, took full advantage of the opportunities and ended up commanding armies at the height of the Revolution in campaigns across Europe and the Middle East, only to one day face an implacable enemy he could not defeat. 

Also available as an audiobook.

Review by Peter Critchley of the Vernon Branch