Read by Esther, Kirsten Ferreri, David Collins, Anna Simon, Paul-Gabriel Wiener, Eileen George, Cori Samuel, Robert Flach, Great Plains, Clarke Bell · 90 chapters · 25 h 43
Twenty years have passed since the four friends of The Three Musketeers went their separate ways. D’Artagnan is still a lieutenant and still waiting for the recognition he deserves. Athos has retired to the country. Porthos has grown comfortable, and Aramis wears the cloth of a churchman. France, meanwhile, is troubled: a boy king, a powerful minister in Cardinal Mazarin, and a nobility that is restless and quarrelsome.
When d’Artagnan is sent on a mission that calls the old comrades together, they find themselves on different sides of a political struggle, and old loyalties are tested by new ones. Alexandre Dumas continues his famous cycle with the same energy, humour and sword-play, but with a more mature sense of what time does to men. In ninety chapters and nearly twenty-six hours, this sequel invites you back into a world of intrigue, friendship and daring.
Introduction
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) published Twenty Years After in 1845 in serial form, as the sequel to The Three Musketeers, and it forms the second part of what are known as the d’Artagnan Romances. A third part, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, completes the cycle.
The novel is set in the 1640s, during the minority of Louis XIV and the political troubles in France known as the Fronde, which saw nobles and parliaments challenge royal authority. Dumas takes real events and real figures, including the queen regent, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, and weaves his four heroes into them. Some readers prefer the lightness of the first book; others find that the sequel has greater depth, since the friends are older, their hopes are more complicated and they can no longer take their friendship for granted. Echoes of the first book run through the story, and old debts and old enmities return to shape the action, so that the past is never far from the present.
This is a long book, divided into 90 sections and lasting about twenty-six hours. It is read by volunteers for LibriVox, who share the chapters among them, so the voices change as the narrative moves between the court, the countryside and the battlefield.
If you enjoyed the first book, you will find the same pleasures here: fast pacing, vivid dialogue, and characters you quickly come to care about. If you did not read the first one, you can still follow the story, although a little knowledge of the earlier adventures adds to the enjoyment. It is a satisfying choice for a long journey or a winter project.
Public domain
Alexandre Dumas died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
