Les Misérables

You know the musical. You know the movie. You know the songs. But the novel Victor Hugo spent seventeen years writing is something else entirely. Les Misérables is one of the longest, most ambitious, and most emotionally overwhelming novels ever written. At its center is Jean Valjean, a convict transformed by a single act of mercy into a man who will spend the rest of his life paying that mercy forward. Pursuing him across decades is Inspector Javert, a man so committed to the law that he cannot survive discovering it is wrong. Around them, Hugo builds an entire world: the streets of Paris, the sewers beneath them, the barricades where students die for a republic that does not yet exist, and a love story so pure it aches. This edition presents the complete, unabridged novel in Isabel Florence Hapgood's acclaimed 1887 translation. The musical gives you three hours. Hugo gives you everything. This is the full cathedral.