THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by ALEXANDRE DUMAS

"There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope."

Personal Rating: 10/10

Oh, on what slender threads, do life and fortune hand -

This said, the story of The Count of Monte Cristo is a journey across human egoism and characterism, about revenge and retribution. A powerful novel which strikes the reader and becomes not only a real page turner, but on the edge.

Imagine this: you, a 21 years old middle class young man, who earns his daily bread one day gets promoted in rank. The wheels of fortune turns turns in your favor and you also attain the love of your life, and above all, you are perfectly as happy as a mortal man can be; and suddenly, just like that, everything is taken away from you: your job, your love and your happiness; all at once, and you are accused for a crime which you have no idea about, let alone committing. Everything goes topsy turvy, and you end up 14 long years in a Dungeon where there is no light, no air.

This is exactly what happened to the protagonist of our story- Edmond Dantès, who gained everything, lost double in price and ended up gaining ten-folds in return, all for being patiently silent.

The three man who play the plot against Dantès, namely Danglars who later becomes Banker Danglars, Fernand or Monsieur de Morcerf and Monsieur le Crown Prosecutor, de Villefort. And somehow Cadarousse plays his little part as well

All of the above names are accomplice into framing Dantès for a crime of being a spy, a Bonapartist. In doing so, he not only loses his love, fiancée, the beautiful Catalan Mercedes, but also loses his father, the old Dantès who dies of starvation.

He accepts fate and realizes that God,or the Providence has turned away from him and he is doomed to suffer alone. With all reasons and logic lost, Dantès finds himself locked up in the darkness dungeon of Chateau d'If, until one night he finally gets to meet with Abbe Faria, who was also a prisoner in another dungeon. And that exactly is when his life changes. Faria instills in him every kind of human knowledge possible and known to him, at last, telling about a secret treasure with immense wealth buried underneath the Isle of Monte Cristo. The rest, will be spoilers, so I must stop.

Edmond Dantès, now known by pseudonyms: Abbe Busoni, Lord Wilmore, Sinbad the Sailor and The Count of Monte Cristo, is now all set to take revenge and bring forth the wrath of Providence. He takes it upon himself to punish his wrongdoers.

Dantès becomes,or lets say, thinks that he's become a God, but a God with a mortal heart is no more than a baby with a shield of iron.

He gets engulfed in his revenge and strikes everyone who dares cross his path. He starts performing miracles and even brings back the dead like a God,he did everything to be a God but only to later realize he is more a mere mortal man himself than any ordinary man.

There is only one remedy to evil and which is patience and silence. Wait and hope.

I have never read and enjoyed and binged anything like this before. This wasn't a story, it was a journey and now that I've come to an end, I regret it. A real page-turner.

The story by Dumas is literally based on a real life case in which a man, just like Dantès, was arrested under false accusations.

Dumas' narration and various different characters, brought in together with love, sadness, fear and even unnatural accounts, is a massive book, which in the end only falls too short.

If I were to be left in an unknown and empty island and were told to keep only 1 book, definitely no doubt it would be a hundred time The Count of Monte Cristo.

Thank you for reading, this book is a must read for any book lover.