Next time the Politically Correct crowd want you to read a "black author" tell them you are a fan of Alexandre Dumas.
And the more European the title sounds the better, but any of the Three Musketeers/The D'Artagnan Romances series (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later) would be the best bet. There was a reason the BBC case a mixed race actor to play Porthos in their version of the books.
Alexandre
Dumas, AKA Alexandre Dumas père, author of The Three Musketeers and The
Count of Monte Cristo (and father of Alexandre Dumas fils, who wrote La
Dame aux Camélias). Alexandre père's father (or, if you prefer, the
père's père), General Alexandre (Alex) Dumas, was black Haitian, the son
of an aristocratic French father, Marquis Alexandre Davy de la
Pailleterie, and a freed slave, Marie-Cesette Dumas. Toss in that the
father was a general in Napoleon's grande armée!
The writer's father's dad sold the boy as a slave to pay for his passage to France
(that's remedial parenting classes for you, Marquis de la Pailleterie)
before buying his freedom. Later, Alex rose through the ranks of the
army to become a general before he was 30. He was so effective that that
the Austrians called him Der schwarze Teufel ("the Black Devil").
During the French revolution fought with other black men in a unit
called the African Legion.
