Scaramouche

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad…”


Set during the French Revolution, Scaramouche, a classic novel of swashbuckling romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual’s role in society—a story that has become Rafael Sabatini’s enduring legacy.


Andre-Louis Moreau has little interest in politics until his friend Philippe, who is passionate about the revolutionary cause, is provoked into fighting a duel with the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. It’s a duel Philippe has no chance of winning and when he is killed by the Marquis, Andre-Louis considers it to be murder.


Moreau embarks on a journey that will see him fomenting sedition, and falling in love with various ladies of virtue or, as often, ill repute.


He takes refuge with a nomadic band of actors and assumes the role of the clown Scaramouche—a comic figure with a very serious message indeed. 


Along the way, Andre-Louis sets in motion a plan for taking revenge on the man who killed Philippe.


RAFAEL SABATINI (1875–1950) was an Italian-English writer best known for his worldwide bestsellers: The Sea Hawk, Scaramouche, Captain Blood, and Bellarion the Fortunate. Remarkably, Sabatini produced some thirty-one novels, eight short story collections, six non-fiction books, and several plays.


"One wonders if there is another storyteller so adroit at filling his pages with intrigue and counter-intrigue, with danger threaded with romance, with a background of lavish color, of silks and velvets, of swords and jewels." 


-London Daily Telegraph