About 20 years ago, I read Robin Buss’s brilliant, unabridged translation of Alexandre Duma’s The Count of Monte Cristo. (The Count of Monte Cristo was originally published as a newspaper serial in Le Journal des Débats in 18 parts, running from August 28, 1844, to January 15, 1846. Following its success as a serial, it was published in book form starting in 1846.)

As a kid, I read The Count of Monte Cristo in abridgments and Classics Illustrated. Reading Robin Buss’s translation of The Count of Monte Cristo was a revelation! Yes, it’s 1,243 pages but it is full of Edmond Dantes on a quest to punish the men who falsely sent him to the sinister Castle d’If prison for 15 years.

Here’s what Robin Buss says in his Introduction to he Count of Monte Cristo: “There are not many children’s books, even in our own time, that involve a female serial poisoner, two cases of infanticide, a stabbing and three suicides, an extended scene of torture and execution, drug-induced sexual fantasies, illegitimacy, transvestism and lesbianism, a display of the author’s classical learning and his knowledge of modern European history, the customs and diets of Italians, the effects of hashish, and so on.”

Although Dumas established his reputation as a playwright, once he started writing novels in the 1830s, Dumas became a writing machine. His collected works fill 300 volumes! And, for those who aren’t familiar with Tom Reiss’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography, The Black Count (2012), it might come as surprise to learn Duma’s father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was the child of an enslaved Haitian and a French aristocrat. Thomas-Alexandre rose through the ranks of the French army and became a general. A falling out with Napoleon led to Dumas’ father being arrested and incarcerated for nearly two years in prison–perhaps inspiring The Count of Monte Cristo…

The 8-hour series of The Count of Monte Cristo on PBS tries (and understandably fails) to convey all that happens in Dumas’ 1,243 pages. But this is the most detailed version of The Count of Monte Cristo that I’ve seen. In his much longer and more detailed review of The Count of Monte Cristo–both the novel and the PBS series–Michael Dirda points out differences between the two. Dirda also notes out the PBS final episode has an ending different from Dumas’ novel (you can check out “Dantes’s Inferno” in The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2026). If you’re a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, don’t miss this series! GRADE: B+