6 h 24 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 6 h 24 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a gathering near Paris turns its talk toward the dead?
In The Thousand and One Ghosts, Alexandre Dumas steps into his own collection as a curious, sociable traveler. Near Paris, he meets people ready to share stories of hauntings, crimes, and signs from beyond the grave. Each guest brings a different tale, and the gathering becomes the thread that holds them together.
The stories move through different places, periods, and moods, with France’s violent past close behind them. The shadow of the French Revolution falls across a world familiar with sudden death. Yet Dumas tells these dark tales with warmth, jokes, and digressions, drawing you into the conversation rather than following one tight plot.
What you’ll discover
- A storyteller steps inside Meet Dumas as a character, drawn from the road into talk of crime and ghosts.
- Each guest brings ghosts Follow the gathering from teller to teller, each with a different encounter with the dead.
- France’s haunting past Feel the shadow of the French Revolution fall across stories marked by sudden death.
- Dark tales, warm company Enjoy a chatty storyteller whose jokes and digressions sit alongside the promise of a scare.
- Stories within a story Explore a loose chain of supernatural tales held together by the people who tell them.
Who will love it
For readers who love campfire tales, haunted tombs and stories passed from one voice to the next. Fans of vampire legends and of the French Revolution will find a great deal to enjoy.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A hunting trip ends with a confession
- A murderer fears the room he has made
- The official report meets the unexplained
- A Thursday dinner among collectors of the strange
- Can a severed head still feel and see
- Albert and Solange in the Terror
- Ghosts that only one person can see
- The pale lady at the gathering
- What the tales say and how they are told
Who’s who
- Alexandre DumasThe storyteller himself, a playwright out hunting, who witnesses the confession and listens through the evening.
- Mr. LedruMayor of Fontenay-aux-Roses and son of the royal physicist Comus, he hosts the Thursday dinner and holds a story he has never told.
- JacqueminA quarryman who confesses to killing his wife and fears the cellar where her head waits.
- Dr. RobertThe cheerful local doctor who believes only in what reason explains and mocks every ghost.
- AllietteAn elderly card reader, known as Etteilla, who claims to have lived several lives.
- Abbé MoulleA gentle priest who believes that good and evil spirits stand beside every person.
- Chevalier LenoirThe scholar who founded a museum of French monuments and witnessed the opening of the royal tombs.
- HedwigeThe pale Polish lady in black who tells the last tale, of two brothers in the Carpathians.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 6 h 24 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Die tausendundein Gespenster
by Alexandre Dumas · 1849
A quarryman confesses to the mayor of Fontenay-aux-Roses, and says his wife's severed head spoke to him.
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In short
Can a head speak after it is cut from the body? On a September day in 1831, a quarryman runs bloody-handed through the village of Fontenay-aux-Roses and swears one did.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A hunting trip ends with a confession
Dumas goes to Fontenay-aux-Roses on September 1, 1831, to open the hunting season at the invitation of an old friend. The shooting is poor, so he slips away from the line and walks into the village around one in the afternoon.
At the corner of Diane Street, a man runs past him, pale, with his hair on end and his hands red. He rings at the gate of the mayor, Mr. Ledru, and sinks onto a stone post. When Mother Antoine opens the door, he asks her to tell her master that he has killed his wife and has come to give himself up.
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What is The Thousand and One Ghosts about?
It is a frame story. Dumas meets a murderer in a French village, then spends an evening with a mayor and his friends who tell stories of severed heads, ghosts, haunted tombs and vampires.
Who tells the stories in The Thousand and One Ghosts?
Mr. Ledru, Dr. Robert, Chevalier Lenoir, Abbé Moulle, Alliette and a pale lady named Hedwige each take a turn. Dumas is the listener and the voice that links their tales.
Is The Thousand and One Ghosts a true story?
It is fiction, though it uses real places, people and events such as Danton, Charlotte Corday and the opening of the royal tombs at Saint-Denis. Dumas wrote it in the nineteenth century as a collection.
The author
Alexandre Dumas
1802–1870 · French novelist and playwright
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was a French novelist and playwright. He was born in Villers-Cotterêts, lived in Paris, and died in Puys, near Dieppe. He wrote The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1846), Twenty Years After (1845), and The Black Tulip (1850).
More by Alexandre Dumas
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