Les Misérables
Victor Hugo (1862)
“A convicted felon becomes a saint; a righteous detective becomes a broken man. Hugo's cathedral of a novel asks whether law and mercy can ever occupy the same soul.”
At a Glance
Jean Valjean, imprisoned nineteen years for stealing bread, is released on parole in 1815 France and transformed by an act of radical mercy from a bishop. He reinvents himself as a factory owner and mayor, shelters a dying woman's daughter, and raises the girl Cosette as his own — all while hunted by the obsessive inspector Javert, who cannot accept that a man can change. Through the Paris barricades of 1832, Valjean saves the life of the student revolutionary Marius, who loves Cosette. Javert, faced with the proof that his moral universe is wrong, kills himself. Valjean dies peacefully, loved and absolved.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Les Misérables is the most widely read French novel in history, translated into virtually every language and continuously in print since 1862. It sold out its first print run in hours. It was immediately controversial — praised by the poor, attacked by the Church and conservatives who called it immoral for making a criminal the hero. It changed French penal law within a decade of publication. It remains the foundational text of the French left's moral imagination.
Diction Profile
Elevated literary French rendered in elevated English — formal, expansive, given to subordination and periodic sentences. Dialogue is class-differentiated.
High but not decorative