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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 Inspector 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.

Norman Denny´s lively English translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing Hugo´s political and artistic aims in writing Les Misérables.

Victor Hugo (1802-85) wrote volumes of criticism, dramas, satirical verse and political journalism but is best remembered for his novels, especially Notre-Dame de Paris (also known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables, which was adapted into one of the most successful musicals of all time.

´All human life is here´
Cameron Mackintosh, producer of the musical Les Misérables

´One of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world´
Upton Sinclair

´A great writer - inventive, witty, sly, innovatory´
A. S. Byatt, author of Possession

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"Hugo´s genius was for the creation of simple and recognizable myth. The huge success of Les Misérables as a didactic work on behalf of the poor and oppressed is due to his poetic and myth-enlarged view of human nature." -V. S. Pritchett

"It was Tolstoy who vindicated [Hugo´s] early ambition by judging Les Misérables one of the world´s great novels, if not the greatest... [His] ability to present the extremes of experience ´as they are´ is, in the end, Hugo´s great gift." -From the Introduction by Peter Washington

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Hugo, Victor
Victor Hugo was born in Besan‡on, France in 1802. In 1822 he published his first collection of poetry and in the same year, he married his childhood friend, Adèle Foucher. In 1831 he published his most famous youthful novel, Notre-Dame de Paris. A royalist and conservative as a young man, Hugo later became a committed social democrat and was exiled from France as a result of his political activities. In 1862, he wrote his longest and greatest novel, Les Misérables. After his death in 1885, his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe before being buried in the Panthéon.

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