The discovery of Dumas's last, incomplete novel, lost and completely unknown to historians for more than a century, was a literary bombshell. The Last Cavalier is Dumas's swan song, a rousing adventure that completes his epic retelling of French history from the Renaissance (La Reine Margot) to his present day (The Count of Monte Cristo) by filling in that one vital, dramatic era that was missing: the Age of Napoleon.
A tale of family honor and heroic derring-do, The Last Cavalier follows the fortunes of young Hector, Count de Sainte-Hermine, who has sworn an oath to avenge his Royalist family members' deaths by fighting against Napoleon. When he is defeated, he is sentenced to serve as a common soldier in Napoleon's imperial forces. Though he courts death fearlessly, Hector's daring deeds will change his destiny—and Napoleon's.
It is rousing, big spirited, its action sweeping across oceans and continents, its hero gloriously indomitable. This newly discovered last novel of Alexandre Dumas, lost for 125 years in the archives of the National Library in Paris, completes the Dumas oeuvre.
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), French novelist and playwright, was one of the most famous and prolific French writers of the nineteenth century, producing some 250 books. He is best known for his historical novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and he was among the first authors to fully exploit the possibilities of the serial novel. He is credited with revitalizing the historical novel in France. His riveting, fast-paced adventure tales that blend history and fiction have been adapted into nearly 200 films. His last unfinished last novel, The Last Cavalier, lost to historians for 125 years, was completed in 2005 and quickly became a best seller.
Simon Prebble, a British-born performer, is a stage and television actor and veteran narrator of some three hundred audiobooks. As one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices, he has received thirty-seven Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie in 2010. He lives in New York.