By Victor Hugo
A super new translation through Christine Donougher of Victor Hugo's exciting masterpiece, with an advent by way of Robert Tombs. The Wretched (Les Misérables) is the root for either the longest operating musical at the West finish and the highly-acclaimed movie starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway.
Victor Hugo's story of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict made up our minds to place his felony earlier at the back of him. yet his makes an attempt to turn into a revered member of the group are continuously placed below hazard: via his personal judgment of right and wrong, and through the relentless investigations of the dogged policeman Javert. it isn't easily for himself that Valjean needs to remain loose, in spite of the fact that, for he has sworn to guard the child daughter of Fantine, pushed to prostitution via poverty.
'A fantastic success. It reads simply, occasionally racily, and Hugo's narrative strength is rarely allow down ... a virtually perfect translation, which brings the entire flavour of 1 of the best novels of the 19th century to new readers within the twenty-first' - William Doyle, occasions Literary Supplement
'The year's best book from Penguin Classics used to be really The Wretched [...] a brand new translation through Christine Donougher of the radical we know as Les Misérables. you might imagine that 1,300 pages is a giant funding of time while the tale is so frequent, yet no version can exhibit the addictive excitement afforded by means of Victor Hugo's narrative voice: through turns chatty, crotchety, buoyant and savagely ironical, it's made to appear so modern and clean in Donougher's rendering that the ebook has the entire resonance of the main topical state-of-the-nation novel' - Telegraph
'Christine Donougher's seamless and intensely sleek translation of Les Misérables has an remarkable impact in that it reminds readers that Hugo used to be going additional than any Dickensian lament approximately social stipulations [...] The Wretched touches the soul' - usher in Scotland
Victor Hugo used to be born in Besançon, France in 1802. In 1822 he released his first number of poetry and within the similar yr, he married his adolescence buddy, Adèle Foucher. In 1831 he released his most renowned younger novel, Notre-Dame de Paris. A royalist and conservative as a tender guy, Hugo later turned a devoted social democrat and used to be exiled from France due to his political actions. In 1862, he wrote his longest and maximum novel, The Wretched (Les Misérables). After his dying in 1885, his physique lay in nation less than the Arc de Triomphe ahead of being buried within the Panthéon.
Christine Donougher is a contract translator and editor. She has translated quite a few books from French and Italian, and received the 1992 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for her translation of Sylvie Germain's The e-book of Nights.
Robert Tombs is Professor of historical past at St John's collage, Cambridge. His latest booklet is That candy Enemy: The French and the British from the solar King to the current, co-written with Isabelle Tombs.