Les Miserables : The Great French Novel That Opened New Horizons Of Literat

Hugo’s wrenching story centers on Jean Valjean, an honest peasant sentenced to five years’ hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread, then nineteen more for trying to escape. Turned into a hardened and ruthless criminal by his experiences, he reforms and becomes mayor of a French town, but is tracked down by the pitiless detective Javert for another obscure crime, and incarcerated. Escaping again from the brutal French prison, he befriends a prostitute named Fantine and her daughter, Cosette. This 1862 novel is remarkable for its sympathetic portrayal of common people: prisoners, the poor, women of the streets: all the down-and-out victims of the gross inequities of class in 19th-century Europe.