Scaramouche — Rafael Sabatini

Raised by a supposed "godfather," Andre-Louis Moteau knows nothins about his background or his real parents -- not even his real name. All he knows is that he wants vengeance against the vicious, arrogant aristocrat who brutally murdered his best friend. As France plummets into revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, Moreau's journey toward revenge takes him through several careers. Alternately a lawyer, a fugitive, and an actor and playwright, Moreau eventually becomes a member of the French National Assembly. Hiding with a troupe of itinerant actors, he gleefully plays the traditional commedia dell'arte role of Scaramouche, the troublemaking trickster who, like Shakespeare's fools and jesters, speaks painful truths disguised as harmless comedy.

Rafael Sabatini was a twentieth-century Alexandre Dumas -- a masterful creator of swashbuckling historical romances. Mixing real people with fictional characters and actual events with invented ones, Sabatini drew vivid, accurately detailed pictures of revolution-addled France. In Scaramouche, he turns a sweeping adventure epic into a subtle psychological study, as Moreau's odyssey gradually becomes less about revenge and more about self-discovery.