9780449458341

Les Miserables

Victor Hugo

ISBN 10: 0449458342 / 0-449-45834-2
ISBN 13: 9780449458341
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Softcover
Editorial Reviews:
Synopsis:

Few novels ever swept the world with such overpowering impact as LES MISRABLES. Within twenty-four hours of its publication in 1862, the first Paris edition was sold out. In other great cities throughout the world, it was devoured with equal relish.Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, LES MISRABLES is not only a superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of how the convict Jean Valjean struggles to escape his past and reaffirm his humanity in a world brutalized by poverty and ignorance became the gospel of the poor and the oppressed. One of the greatest works in Western literature, LES MISRABLES is an exhilarating and deeply profound reading experience.WITH 8 PAGES OF PHOTOS FROM THE MOVIE


Review:

"From the bare abstract, the story does not seem to promise much pleasure to novel-readers, yet it is all alive with the fiery genius of Victor Hugo, and the whole representation is so intense and vivid that it is impossible to escape from the fascination it exerts over the mind. Few who take the book up will leave it until they have read it through. It is morbid...but its morbid elements are so combined with sentiments abstractly Christian that it is calculated to wield a...pernicious influence.... Its tendency is to weaken that abhorrence of crime which is the great shield of most of the virtue which society possesses, and it does this by attempting to prove that society itself is responsible for crimes it cannot prevent, but can only punish....Considered as a passionate romance, appealing to the sympathies of the ordinary readers of novels, it will do infinitely more harm than good."

Edwin Percy Whipple, Atlantic Monthly, July 1862