Synopses & Reviews
‘He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24601’
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 policeman 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. A compelling and compassionate view of the victims of early nineteenth-century French society, Les Misérables is a novel on an epic scale, moving inexorably from the eve of the battle of Waterloo to the July Revolution of 1830.
Norman Denny’s introduction to his lively English translation discusses Hugo’s political and artistic aims in writing Les Misérables.
Review
“Donougher's translation is a magnificent achievement. It reads easily, sometimes racily, and Hugo's narrative power is never let down...[an] almost flawless translation, which brings the full flavour of one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century to new readers in the twenty-first.”
—William Doyle, Times Literary Supplement
"The year's most interesting publication from Penguin Classics was actually [...] a new translation by Christine Donougher of the novel we all know as Les Misérables. You may think that 1,300 pages is a huge investment of time when the story is so familiar, but no adaptation can convey the addictive pleasure afforded by Victor Hugo's narrative voice: by turns chatty, crotchety, buoyant and savagely ironical, it's made to seem so contemporary and fresh in Donougher's rendering that the book has all the resonance of the most topical state-of-the-nation novel."
—Telegraph
"Christine Donougher's seamless and very modern translation of Les Misérables has an astonishing effect in that it reminds readers that Hugo was going further than any Dickensian lament about social conditions ... [Les Mis] touches the soul."
—Herald Scotland
Synopsis
In time for the 150th anniversary of Les Misérables and a star-studded film adaptation, a stunning edition of Victor Hugo's masterpiece Victor Hugo's timeless story of injustice, heroism, and love in nineteenth-century Paris comes to Penguin Classics in an eye-catching new hardcover edition with cover art by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Wildly popular since its first publication in 1862,
Les Misérables comes to theaters this December in a new film adaptation with a stellar cast that includes Hugh Jackman as the intrepid Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe as the relentless policeman Javert. Penguin Classics' beautiful edition makes a wonderful gift for longtime fans of the Broadway musical and introduces a new generation of readers to one of the most important novels ever written.
This gorgeous hardcover edition features the widely celebrated and eminently readable translation by Norman Denny.
Synopsis
In time for the 150th anniversary of Les Misérables and a star-studded film adaptation, a stunning edition of Victor Hugo's masterpiece Victor Hugo's timeless story of injustice, heroism, and love in nineteenth-century Paris comes to Penguin Classics in an eye-catching new hardcover edition with cover art by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Wildly popular since its first publication in 1862,
Les Misérables comes to theaters this December in a new film adaptation with a stellar cast that includes Hugh Jackman as the intrepid Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe as the relentless policeman Javert. Penguin Classics' beautiful edition makes a wonderful gift for longtime fans of the Broadway musical and introduces a new generation of readers to one of the most important novels ever written.
This gorgeous hardcover edition features the widely celebrated and eminently readable translation by Norman Denny.
Synopsis
The first new Penguin Classics translation in forty years of Victor Hugos masterpiecepublished in a stunning Graphic Deluxe edition The subject of the worlds longest-running musical and the recent Academy Awardnominated and BAFTA-winning film starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables is a genuine literary treasure. Victor Hugos tale of injustice, heroism, and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him, and has been a perennial favorite since it first appeared nearly 150 years ago. This exciting new translation with Jillian Tamakis brilliant cover art will be a gift both to readers who have already fallen for its timeless story and to new readers discovering it for the first time.
About the Author
Born in 1802, the son of a high officer in Napoleon’s army, Victor Hugo spent his childhood against a background of military life in Elba, Corsica, Naples, and Madrid. After the Napoleonic defeat, the Hugo family settled in straitened circumstances in Paris, where, at the age of fifteen, Victor Hugo commenced his literary career with a poem submitted to a contest sponsored by the Académie Française. Twenty-four years later, Hugo was elected to the Académie, having helped revolutionize French literature with his poems, plays, and novels. Entering politics, he won a seat in the National Assembly in 1848; but in 1851, he was forced to flee the country because of his opposition to Louis Napoleon. In exile on the Isle of Guernsey, he became a symbol of French resistance to tyranny; upon his return to Paris after the Revolution of 1870, he was greeted as a national hero. He continued to serve in public life and to write with unabated vigor until his death in 1885. He was buried in the Pantheon with every honor the French nation could bestow.