Scaramouche

When the aristocratic Lord of La Tour d'Azyr murders Andre-Louis's best friend - a young man who is politically active during the French Revolution - Andre-Louis vows to take up his friend's cause and avenge his death. He takes refuge as an actor in a travelling troupe, performing under the name Scaramouche. His adventures are pulse-pounding, his heroism is the stuff of legend - but it is his destiny that we remember. Scaramouche's fate is the destiny of a nation, the crusade of an age: this is the story of the events that made France a modern nation. The fate of Scaramouche is the fate we all still share Rafael Sabatini was an Italian/British writer of novels of romance and adventure. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. It took Sabatini roughly a quarter of a century of hard work before he attained success with Scaramouche in 1921. This brilliant novel of the French Revolution became an international best-seller. It was followed by the equally successful Captain Blood in 1922. All of his earlier books were rushed into reprints, the most popular of which was The Sea Hawk from 1915. Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year. While he perhaps didn't achieve the mammoth success of Scaramouche and Captain Blood, nonetheless Sabatini still maintained a great deal of popularity with the reading public through the decades that followed. The public knew that in picking up a Sabatini book, they could always count upon a good read, and his following was loyal and extensive.