Unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world. This title gives an unexpected picture of the twentieth-century - of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism.

Shows us that the inspiration for the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Alex Dumas' own father, Alex - the son of a marquis and a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from private in the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown up among slaves, he was all for Liberty and Equality.