Les Misérables (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: [French] Victor Hugo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: "Among all the great figures in the literary and artistic world, he is the only one who truly lives in the hearts of the French." This is how Roman Rolland described Hugo. As a teenager, Rolland preserved a copy of the Don Quixote magazine, which featured a painting titled The Old Orpheus: with white hair crowned in a halo, he was playing a lyre, singing for the suffering masses. This image left by the author of Les Misérables might be more readily accepted by the public. Reading Les Misérables, the most prominent feeling is its weight. For another masterpiece like Jean-Christophe or In Search of Lost Time, one doesn’t experience this sense of weight—it’s not something held in the hands but rather something that presses on the heart, feeling the heavy accumulation of human suffering. Not every book that delves into profound suffering can truly deserve the word "heavy." Yet Les Misérables does, because this great work weighed on the author’s heart for thirty years.