The Knitting of Vengeance

Originally by Charles Dickens

Reimagined from the vantage point of Madame Defarge

"Every stitch a name. Every name a debt."

Madame Defarge sits and knits. In every stitch, she encodes the name of an aristocrat who must die. Dickens made her a villain. History makes her a revolutionary. This reimagining follows a woman whose entire family was destroyed by the aristocracy, and who channels her grief into the most patient, methodical vengeance in literature.

Pages

380

Print Price

$24.99

Kindle Price

$9.99

Genre

Historical Literary Fiction

Why This Vantage Point

A Tale of Two Cities has sold 200+ million copies — the best-selling novel ever. Madame Defarge is one of literature's great villains, but her backstory is genuinely tragic. The villain-origin-story model is proven commercial gold.

Read an Excerpt

The Original

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The Reimagined — Madame Defarge's Voice

They say it was the best of times. They say this from their carriages, their country houses, their tables heavy with food. I say it from the gutter where my sister bled out, where my brother was worked to death, where my father's name was erased as if he had never lived. I do not knit for pleasure. I knit because thread holds memory better than stone. Every stitch is a name. Every row is a family that was taken from us. When the thread runs out, so does their time.

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