Revenge A Novel

This brilliant recasting of the classic storyThe Count of Monte Cristocenters on Ned Maddstone, a happy, charismatic, Oxford-bound seventeen-year-old whose rosy future is virtually pre-ordained. Handsome, confident, and talented, newly in love with bright, beautiful Portia, his father an influential MP, Ned leads a charmed life. But privilege makes him an easy target for envy, and in the course of one day Ned's destiny is forever altered. A promise made to a dying teacher combined with a prank devised by a jealous classmate mutates bewilderingly into a case of mistaken arrest and incarceration. Ned finds himself a political prisoner in a nightmarish exile that lasts years, until a fellow inmate reawakens Ned's intellect and resurrects his will to live. The chilling consequences of Ned's recovery are felt worldwide.

Stephen Fry is the author of three previous novels and a memoir. As an actor he has been featured in numerous films, including Gosford Park, A Civil Action, and Wilde, in which he played the title role, and in such popular English TV series as Jeeves and Wooster, Black Adder, and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. He lives in London.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>