The Novel of the Century
The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Winner of the American Library in Paris Book Award, 2017
Les Misérables is among the most popular and enduring novels ever written. Like Inspector Javert’s dogged pursuit of Jean Valjean, its appeal has never waned, but only grown broader in its one-hundred-and-fifty-year life. Whether we encounter Victor Hugo’s story on the page, onstage, or on-screen, Les Misérables continues to captivate while also, perhaps unexpectedly, speaking to contemporary concerns. In The Novel of the Century, the acclaimed scholar and translator David Bellos tells us why.
This enchanting biography of a classic of world literature is written for “Les Mis” fanatics and novices alike. Casting decades of scholarship into accessible narrative form, Bellos brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his novel of the downtrodden despite a revolution, a coup d’état, and political exile; how he pulled off a pathbreaking deal to get it published; and how his approach to the “social question” would define his era’s moral imagination. More than an ode to Hugo’s masterpiece, The Novel of the Century also shows that what Les Misérables has to say about poverty, history, and revolution is full of meaning today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As Bellos (Is That a Fish in Your Ear?), a translator of French literature, proves here, the story of how Victor Hugo's classic novel came to life is a challenging, complex, and utterly engrossing epic all its own. The narrative sweeps the reader along on the journey from germinating idea to published book (in April 1862). Along the way, readers meet such compelling real-life characters as Hugo's dedicated wife and publicity manager, Ad le; his equally dedicated mistress and chief copyist, Juliette Drouet; and his innovative publisher, Albert Lacroix. Some of the most fascinating sections chronicle the breathtaking laboriousness of 19th-century publishing: corrected galleys went back and forth by boat between Hugo, in exile on the Isle of Guernsey, and the Belgium-based Lacroix, who purchased 22 tons of lead type to print it all. There are tidbits of trivia sprinkled effervescently throughout (Bellos notes that reluctant readers may read just one chapter a day the novel contains 365), along with serious considerations of Hugo's relationship to the French language, his moral universe, and his political intentions for a book that spawned countless spin-offs.
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