Satan and His Daughter, the Angel Liberty Format: Paperback

Victor Hugo spent years in political exile off the coast of Normandy. While there, he produced his masterpiece, Les Misérables—but that wasn’t all: he also wrote a book-length poem, La Fin de Satan, left unfinished and not published until after his death.

Satan and his Daughter, the Angel Liberty, drawn from this larger poem, tells the story of Satan and his daughter, the angel created by God from a feather left behind following his banishment. Hugo details Satan’s fall, and through a despairing soliloquy, reveals him intent on revenge, yet desiring God’s forgiveness. The angel Liberty, meanwhile, is presented by Hugo as the embodiment of good, working to convince her father to return to Heaven.

This new translation by Richard Skinner presents Hugo’s verse in a unique prose approach to the poet’s poignant work, and is accompanied by the Symbolist artist Odilon Redon’s haunting illustrations. No adventurous reader will want to miss this beautiful mingling of the epic and familial, religious and political.

Victor Hugo (1802–85) was a great French playwright, novelist, poet and statesman. He is the author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

R. G. Skinner is an independent scholar and poet.

Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon, was a native of Bordeaux, France. His works can be found in the collections of such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern. Candice Black is an author, translator and editor specializing in Surrealist studies. She graduated from Warwick University in England and currently lives in Tokyo.