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Book Cover for: Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

Reader Score

84%

84% of readers

recommend this book

The classic novel--and hit Broadway show--about escaped convict Jean Valjean
has been adapted with easy-to-read text, large type, and short chapters. This
engaging adaptation of the timeless tale is ideal for reluctant readers and
kids not yet ready to tackle the original.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Fawcett Books
  • Publish Date: Dec 12nd, 1982
  • Pages: 416
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 6.86in - 4.16in - 1.13in - 0.45lb
  • EAN: 9780449300022
  • Categories: ClassicsLiteraryHistorical - General

About the Author

Victor Hugo (1802-85), novelist, poet, playwright, and French national icon, is best known for two of today's most popular world classics: Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, as well as other works, including The Toilers of the Sea and The Man Who Laughs. Hugo was elected to the Académie Française in 1841. As a statesman, he was named a Peer of France in 1845. He served in France's National Assemblies in the Second Republic formed after the 1848 revolution, and in 1851 went into self-imposed exile upon the ascendance of Napoleon III, who restored France's government to authoritarian rule. Hugo returned to France in 1870 after the proclamation of the Third Republic.

Julie Rose's acclaimed translations include Alexandre Dumas's The Knight of Maison-Rouge and Racine's Phèdre, as well as works by Paul Virilio, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Thomas, and many others. She is a recipient of the PEN medallion for translation and the New South Wales Premier's Translation Prize.

Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate, and editor of the Library of America anthology Americans in Paris. He writes on various subjects for The New Yorker and has written introductions to works by Maupassant, Balzac, Proust, and Alain-Fournier.

Praise for this book

"Rich and gorgeous. This is the [translation] to read... and if you are flying, just carry it under your arm as you board, or better still, rebook your holiday and go by train, slowly, page by page."--Jeanette Winterson, The Times (London)

"[A] magnificent story... marvelously captured in this new unabridged translation by Julie Rose."--The Denver Post

"A new translation by Julie Rose of Hugo's behemoth classic that is as racy and current and utterly arresting as it should be."--Buffalo News (editor's choice)

"Vibrant and readable, idiomatic and well suited to a long narrative, [Julie Rose's new translation of Les Miserables] is closer to the captivating tone Hugo would have struck for his own contemporaries."--Diane Johnson

"A lively, dramatic, and wonderfully readable translation of one of the greatest 19th-century novels."--Alison Lurie

"Some of us may have read Les Miserables back in the day, but... between Gopnik and Rose, you'll get two introductions that will offer you all the pleasures of your college instruction with none of the pain."--The Agony Column