Les Misérables
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First published in 1862, Les Misérables is Victor Hugo’s vast portrait of nineteenth-century France, a society divided by poverty, privilege and political upheaval. At its centre is Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, whose release sets him on a difficult path towards redemption. Pursued by the implacable Inspector Javert, Valjean’s life becomes entwined with that of Fantine, her daughter Cosette, and the young revolutionaries of Paris.
Moving between intimate human stories and sweeping historical episodes, Hugo explores the possibility of moral transformation, the force of compassion and the injustices embedded in social institutions. From the streets of Paris to the barricades of the 1832 uprising, the novel gives extraordinary scope to lives usually kept at the margins of history. A defining work of French Romanticism, Les Misérables remains one of the great social novels of the nineteenth century, animated by Hugo’s conviction that dignity and mercy must prevail over punishment and indifference.
From the book
“A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.”
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
On Les Misérables
“Its subject is nothing less than the infinite.”
— Adam Thirlwell, The Guardian