Les Miserables Unabridged Novel by Victor Hugo
The Miserables or Les Miserables was published under many names including The Miserables, The Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, The Victims and The Dispossessed
Les Miserable contains ideas about society, religion and politics, it is in the backdrop of Napoleonic Wars and ensuing years that the story unravels. Grace, moral philosophy, law and the history of France are discussed.
Hugo said about his novel :
The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details ... progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. The starting point: matter, destination: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.
- Volume I: Fantine
- Volume II: Cosette
- Volume III: Marius
- Volume IV: The Idyll in the Rue Plumet and the Epic in the Rue St. Denis
- Volume V: Jean Valjean