Alexandre Dumas
11 Bücher
- Edmond Dantès viene tradito il giorno delle nozze e sepolto nel castello d'If, dove un vecchio abate nella cella accanto cambia tutto. È lungo e paziente sulla vendetta, e guardare Dantès che tende le sue trappole per tutta Parigi è un piacere lento e avvolgente.
- Nell'Olanda del Seicento, il mite coltivatore Cornelius van Baerle insegue il premio per il primo tulipano nero quando la politica lo fa finire in prigione. Rosa, la figlia del carceriere, diventa la sua compagna nel curare il bulbo, ed è un piccolo Dumas pieno di fascino.
- Marguerite Gautier est une courtisane parisienne qui porte toujours des camélias et que la phtisie mine en silence, et le jeune Armand Duval tombe éperdument amoureux d'elle. Dumas fils raconte ça avec tendresse et tristesse, et c'est l'histoire dont Verdi a tiré La Traviata.
- D'Artagnan arrive de Gascogne à Paris sur un ridicule cheval jaune et réussit à se fixer des duels avec Athos, Porthos et Aramis pour le même après-midi. Ensuite viennent les ferrets de diamants de la reine, le cardinal de Richelieu et la glaçante Milady, racontés avec un vrai esprit et à toute allure.
- You get Dumas in a compact, good-humored mood, following Cornelius van Baerle’s stubborn devotion to growing a truly black tulip while Rosa Gryphus brings warmth and practical sense to his troubles. It’s romantic, slightly absurd, and much less demanding than his sprawling adventures.
- You settle in for a long, extravagantly plotted revenge story, and the length earns its keep: Edmond Dantès’s imprisonment, his friendship with Abbé Faria, and the later disguises give the book room to explore what vengeance does to a person. It’s melodramatic, but wonderfully alive.
- You get d’Artagnan’s reckless ambition, Athos’s wounded gravity, Porthos’s glorious vanity, and Aramis’s divided loyalties, all thrown into duels, disguises, and political intrigue. It’s melodramatic and episodic, but the friendship has such snap and warmth that you keep turning pages to spend more time with them.
- You settle in for a long, melancholy farewell to Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan, now older and pulled apart by politics, loyalty, and ambition. It moves more slowly than the earlier musketeer novels, but its sense of friendship aging into legend has real weight.
- You get Dumas in a darker, stranger mood here: Thibault, a resentful peasant, accepts a wolf’s bargain and discovers that every wish feeds the bitterness that made him wish in the first place. It’s uneven and gloriously melodramatic, but the folklore, curses, and moral rot make it a fine rainy-night read.
- The four friends are older here, scattered, even on opposite sides of a civil war for a while, and watching them find their way back to each other is the whole pleasure. It's slower than The Three Musketeers, but middle-aged d'Artagnan scheming against Mazarin is worth it.