Les Miserables (Abridged) (Library Edition)

[This Library Edition -*Abridged*- version in vinyl case - is translated from the French by Charles E. Wilbour]

This is the great French novel that opened new horizons of literature in the nineteenth century.

Les Miserables is a romantic novel packed with revealing incidents of slum life and poverty in the Parisian underworld of early nineteenth century France. The story follows the adventures of Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who was imprisoned for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened and bitter criminal upon his release, Valjean is transformed when an act of compassion by a priest he robbed saves him from returning to prison. Changing his ways, he becomes a successful industrialist and town mayor, raising the orphaned daughter of a prostitute as his own. Yet Valjean is still haunted by his past and pursued relentlessly by the police inspector Javert, who does not believe in moral redemption. Full of suspense, romance, and powerful social commentary, this sweeping epic became the gospel of the poor and oppressed and is widely considered once of the greatest French novels of its age. The core of the book deals with Jean Valjean, a criminal who serves as an example of the misery and contradictions of society with which Victor Hugo was especially concerned.

Les Miserables is both a powerful social document and an extremely interesting and dramatic narrative, which is the culmination of fourteen years' of work and is Hugo's masterpiece.