Les Miserables
By Victor Hugo; Julie Rose (Translator)
(Modern Library, Paperback, 9780812974263, 1376pp.)
Publication Date: July 14, 2009
Other Editions of This Title: Paperback, Mass Market Paperback, Paperback, Mass Market Paperback, Paperback
Categories: Classics, Literary
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In this major new rendition by the acclaimed translator Julie Rose, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is revealed in its full, unabridged glory. A favorite of readers for nearly 150 years, this stirring tale of crime, punishment, justice, and redemption pulses with life. Featuring such unforgettable characters as the quintessential prisoner of conscience Jean Valjean, the relentless police detective Javert, and the tragic prostitute Fantine and her innocent daughter, Cosette, Hugo’s epic novel sweeps readers from the French provinces to the back alleys of Paris, and from the battlefield of Waterloo to the bloody ramparts of Paris during the uprising of 1832. With an Introduction by Adam Gopnik, this Modern Library edition is an outstanding translation of a masterpiece that continues to astonish and entertain readers around the world.
Victor Hugo (1802-85), novelist, poet, playwright, and French national icon, is best known for two of today’s most popular world classics: Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, as well as other works, including The Toilers of the Sea and The Man Who Laughs. Hugo was elected to the Académie Française in 1841. As a statesman, he was named a Peer of France in 1845. He served in France’s National Assemblies in the Second Republic formed after the 1848 revolution, and in 1851 went into self-imposed exile upon the ascendance of Napoleon III, who restored France’s government to authoritarian rule. Hugo returned to France in 1870 after the proclamation of the Third Republic.
Julie Rose’s acclaimed translations include Alexandre Dumas’s The Knight of Maison-Rouge and Racine’s Phèdre, as well as works by Paul Virilio, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Thomas, and many others. She is a recipient of the PEN medallion for translation and the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize.
Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon and Through the Children’s Gate, and editor of the Library of America anthology Americans in Paris. He writes on various subjects for The New Yorker and has recently written introductions to works by Maupassant, Balzac, Proust, and Alain-Fournier.
“A new translation by Julie Rose of Hugo’s behemoth classic that is as racy and current and utterly arresting as it should be.” —The Buffalo News (editor’s choice)
“Lively, dramatic, and wonderfully readable.” —Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Foreign Affairs
“Splendid . . . The magnificent story [is] marvelously captured in this new unabridged translation.”—Denver Post
“Rich and gorgeous. This is the [translation] to read. . . . If you are flying, just carry it under your arm as you board, or better still, rebook your holiday and go by train, slowly, page by page.” —Jeanette Winterson, The Times, London
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