Les Misrables

✍ Scribed by Victor Hugo

• Year: 2012
• Tongue: en-GB
• Weight: 2 MB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables debuted 150 years ago in 1862 and now has become the literal definition of The Big Book. Les Miserables is:

-One of the longest novels in history: 1,900 pages in the original French, 1,400 in English.
-365 chapters long.
-One of the “half-dozen greatest novels of the world,” said Upton Sinclair.
-Packed with 11 major and 40+ minor characters.
-The book that launched at least 60 film versions (#61 coming soon to multiple multiplexes near you).
-The source of countless dramatic adaptations, including the musical, which has played in 42 countries to about a billion people.
-An ever-flowing fount of video games, unofficial sequels and prequels, adoring websites, comic books, radio shows, spoofs and satires, festivals, full-length cartoons, academic dissertations and an inordinate plethora of 24601-themed swag. (For the uninitiated, 24601 was protagonist Jean Valjean’s prison number.)
-The inspiration for many modernized versions, including the TV series The Fugitive and every story about misunderstood revolutionaries. The Last Poets , N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton and Rage Against the Machine all pay homage to author Victor Hugo.
-Still universally loved and critically panned. Flaubert didn’t like it, many reviewers called it “immoral,” and French literary lions the Goncourt brothers despised it. As you can tell, critical opinion doesn’t count for much.