Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL
Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with
the sweep and violence of human passions, Les Misérables is
one of the greatest adventure stories ever told. It is a novel peopled
by colourful characters from the nineteenth-century Parisian
underworld; the street children, the prostitutes and the criminals. In
telling the story of escaped convict Jean Valjean, and his efforts to
reform his ways and care for the little orphan girl he rescues from a
life of cruelty, Victor Hugo drew attention to the plight of the poor
and oppressed. Les Miserables is a masterful detective story, a
comic and tragic story of romance and revolution and, ultimately, a
tale of redemption and hope.
Victor-Marie Hugo was born on 26 February 1802 at Besançon,
where his father, an officer under Napoleon, was stationed. After his
parents separated in 1812, Hugo lived in Paris with his mother and
brothers. At twenty he married Adele Foucher and published his first
poetry collection. Hugo was elected to the Academie Francaise in 1841.
The accidental death two years later of his eldest daughter and her
husband devastated him and marked the end of his first literary
period. By then politics had become central to his life. Though he was
a Royalist in his youth, his views became increasingly liberal after
the July revolution of 1830. He initially supported Louis Napoleon,
but turned against him after being denied a role in government
following the coup d'état of 1851 and was forced into exile in
Brussels and Jersey. After the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, Hugo
returned to France and was re-elected to the National Assembly, and
then to the Senate. Hugo is celebrated as a politician, a social
campaigner, a poet and a novelist. His most famous works include
Notre Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).
Victor Hugo died on 22 May 1885 and his state funeral was attended by
thousands of mourners.
Julie Rose lives in Sydney and is the highly regarded
translator of more than a dozen works, including an acclaimed version
of Racine's Phèdre as well as works by Paul Virilio, Jacques
Rancière, Chantal Thomas, and many others.
