Order Les MisérablesVictor Hugo did not write short books, and he certainly did not write small ones. Les Misérables, first published in 1862, is sprawling in every sense—a novel that spans decades, revolutions, ideologies, and an entire nation’s moral soul. To read it is not simply to follow a plot, but to be submerged in a moral universe where the stakes are nothing less than redemption, justice, and the fate of the human heart. At its center is Jean Valjean, an ex-convict imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, whose journey from hardened criminal to self-sacrificing guardian is as improbable as it…
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and the Epic of Compassion
Les Misérables dares to be clear-eyed and idealistic. It believes that even in the darkest of human lives, there is a soul worth saving. What holds it all together is Hugo’s moral vision—a belief in the possibility of grace, even in the most degraded corners of society.
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