|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
An unassuming retired lecturer is behind the French literary sensation of the summer, having rescued the forgotten last novel of the 19th century epic novelist Alexandre Dumas from the dustbin of history. Claude Schopp, who has devoted 30 years to the study of every aspect of the author’s flamboyant life, stumbled across a first clue to the existence of a lost work in the late 1980s. The discovery in the national archives of a handwritten letter by Dumas set Schopp off on a paper trail of clues worthy of the Da Vinci Code, the summer’s other bestseller. After a five-month hunt Schopp traced the source of the controversy to a defunct 19th century journal, The Universal Monitor. But as he spooled through the microfilm he discovered not a letter or opinion piece, but an epic novel. "For nine months, the readers of the Monitor had found a serial by Dumas every morning at the bottom of the front page," Schopp said. The novel, which Schopp gave the title Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine, charts the life of a dashing young nobleman, Hector de Sainte-Hermine, whose father and brothers all die guillotined or by firing squad in an heroic fight for the restoration of the monarchy and the fall of the republic. Comfortably installed in the Top 10 bestsellers list, the print run should hit 1,00,000 by October, 61-year-old Schopp said. Missing link An important novel rather than a great one like the Count of Monte Cristo or the Three Musketeers, Sainte-Hermine started out as an attempt by Dumas to fill a gap in his overall output. "Dumas’s idea was to tell the country’s history in fictionalised form to people who didn’t know it," Schopp said. "Another goal was to explain ... the French Revolution. Why this revolution was so hard, so cruel, so terrible." Dumas’s impossibly ambitious literary project aimed to cover the period from the Middle Ages to his own lifetime. But Sainte-Hermine only takes readers from 1801 to 1806, leaving a gap of 10 years before the period featured in the popular Count of Monte Cristo, set in post-Waterloo France after the restoration of the monarchy. Not content with shepherding Sainte-Hermine into book form 130 years after it first entertained French readers, Schopp has embarked on an even more ambitious task-writing the sequel. Schopp owns Dumas’s very own "road map" for the new novel, a friend having snapped it up for him at a Paris auction house. It’s written in Dumas’ own hand. — Reuters |
