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Booktopia Comments
The Booktopia Book Guru does not need to recommend this book - History has proclaimed it one of the best novels ever written - and History has read a lot more books than the Booktopia Book Guru! Read it now.
Book Description
Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged policeman Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty. A compelling and compassionate view of the victims of early nineteenth-century French society, Les Misirables is a novel on an epic scale, moving inexorably from the eve of the battle of Waterloo to the July revolution of 1830.
Norman Denny's introduction to his lively English translation discusses Hugo's political and artistic aims in writing Les Miserables.
About the Author
Victor Hugo (1802–85) was the most forceful, prolific and versatile of French nineteenth-century writers. He wrote Romantic costume dramas, many volumes of lyrical and satirical verse, political and other journalism, criticism and several novels, the best known of which are Les misérables (1862) and the youthful Notre-Dame de Paris (1831).
A royalist and conservative as a young man, Hugo later became a committed social democrat and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III was exiled from France, living in the Channel Islands. He returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe before being buried in the Panthéon.
One of the few indisputably great novels that can be read as breathlessly as any thriller - because that is what it is! The unrelenting pursuit of Jean Valjean by the police agent Javert, culminating in the desperate escape attempt through the sewers of Paris, is the essence of the book and the vehicle that carries the cargo of psychological, political and moral debate. Whatever Hugo tells us in the novel only possesses the terrible weight of truthfulness because this monumental work is also perhaps the greatest thriller of them all. (Kirkus UK)
| Introduction | p. 7 |
| Fantine | |
| An Upright Man | p. 19 |
| The Outcast | p. 71 |
| In the Year 1817 | p. 119 |
| To Trust is Sometimes to Surrender | p. 144 |
| Degradation | p. 155 |
| Javert | p. 191 |
| The Champmathieu Affair | p. 202 |
| Counter-Stroke | p. 260 |
| Cosette | |
| Waterloo | p. 279 |
| The Ship Orion | p. 325 |
| Fulfilment of a Promise | p. 338 |
| The Gorbeau Tenement | p. 385 |
| Hunt in Darkness | p. 399 |
| Le Petit-Picpus | p. 425 |
| Cemeteries Take What They are Given | p. 451 |
| Marius | |
| Paris in Microcosm | p. 495 |
| A Grand Bourgeois | p. 512 |
| Grandfather and Grandson | p. 522 |
| The ABC Society | p. 555 |
| The Virtues of Misfortune | p. 584 |
| Conjunction of Two Stars | p. 603 |
| Patron-Minette | p. 619 |
| The Noxious Poor | p. 627 |
| The Idyll in the Rue Plumet and the Epic of the Rue Saint-Denis | |
| A Few Pages of History | p. 705 |
| Eponine | p. 739 |
| The House in the Rue Plumet | p. 756 |
| Help from Below May be Help from above | p. 788 |
| Of Which the End Does Not Resemble the Beginning | p. 797 |
| The Boy Gavroche | p. 812 |
| Enchantment and Despair | p. 844 |
| Where are They Going? | p. 876 |
| 5 June 1832 | p. 883 |
| The Straw in the Wind | p. 904 |
| Corinth | p. 915 |
| Marius Enters the Darkness | p. 943 |
| The Greatness of Despair | p. 953 |
| In the Rue de L'Homme-Arme | p. 970 |
| Jean Valjean | |
| War within Four Walls | p. 987 |
| The Entrails of the Monster | p. 1061 |
| Mire, But the Soul | p. 1076 |
| Javert in Disarray | p. 1104 |
| Grandson and Grandfather | p. 1110 |
| The Sleepless Night | p. 1129 |
| The Bitter Cup | p. 1145 |
| The Fading Light | p. 1162 |
| Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn | p. 1173 |
| The Convent as an Abstract Idea (Part Two, Book VII) | p. 1202 |
| Argot (Part Four, Book VII) | p. 1214 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780140444308
ISBN-10: 0140444300
Series: Penguin Classics
Audience:
General
For Ages: 18+ years old
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 1232
Published: September 1982
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 12.9
x 5.3
Weight (kg): 0.831
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