skopia
You work a machine you do not own, making something you never see again, and it hollows you out. Marx calls this alienation, and the Manifesto makes it a demand for revolution.
Edmond Dantes, a sailor about to marry, is denounced by rivals and buried in an island prison for fourteen years. He returns rich and unrecognizable, and revenge fiction still runs on his design.
Arriving in Paris from Gascony, d'Artagnan duels Athos, Porthos, and Aramis into friendship, then serves the queen against Cardinal Richelieu. No adventure novel has ever moved faster or been better company.