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Les Miserables: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Paperback – Deckle Edge, February 24, 2015

by Victor Hugo (Author), Christine Donougher (Editor, Translator), Jillian Tamaki (Illustrator),

4.8 935 ratings

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The first new Penguin Classics translation in forty years of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, the subject of The Novel of the Century by David Bellos—published in a stunning Deluxe edition. Winner of the French-American Foundation & Florence Gould Foundation’s 29th Annual Translation Prize in Fiction.

The subject of the world’s longest-running musical and the award-winning film, Les Misérables is a genuine literary treasure. Victor Hugo’s tale of injustice, heroism, and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him, and has been a perennial favorite since it first appeared over 150 years ago. This exciting new translation with Jillian Tamaki’s brilliant cover art will be a gift both to readers who have already fallen for its timeless story and to new readers discovering it for the first time.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Donougher's translation is a magnificent achievement. It reads easily, sometimes racily, and Hugo's narrative power is never let down...[an] almost flawless translation, which brings the full flavour of one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century to new readers in the twenty-first.”
—William Doyle, Times Literary Supplement

"The year's most interesting publication from Penguin Classics was actually[...] a new translation by Christine Donougher of the novel we all know as Les Misérables. You may think that 1,300 pages is a huge investment of time when the story is so familiar, but no adaptation can convey the addictive pleasure afforded by Victor Hugo's narrative voice: by turns chatty, crotchety, buoyant and savagely ironical, it's made to seem so contemporary and fresh in Donougher's rendering that the book has all the resonance of the most topical state-of-the-nation novel."
—Telegraph

"Christine Donougher's seamless and very modern translation of Les Misérables has an astonishing effect in that it reminds readers that Hugo was going further than any Dickensian lament about social conditions ... [Les Mis] touches the soul."
—Herald Scotland

About the Author

VICTOR HUGO (1802–1885) was one of the most revered French writers of the nineteenth century.

CHRISTINE DONOUGHER is a freelance translator from French and Italian and a recipient of the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize.

ROBERT TOMBS is a professor of history at St John’s College, Cambridge, England.

JILLIAN TAMAKI is an illustrator and comic artist and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Introduction by Peter Washington- Victor Hugo might be regarded as the Mr Toad of French literature: vain, arrogrant, pompous, selfish, cold and stingy; a windbag, a humbug and a fraud, absurdly puffed up with the immensity of his own greatness. But unlike Mr Toad, he was also an astute and energetic promoter of hisown image as a Great Man. The process began early. Writing in Hugo's lifetime, Virginie Ancelot recalls the reception the young poet received in literary drawing-rooms when he arrived to read his latest ode. "...There was a few moments' silence; then someone rose and approached him with visible emotion, took his hand and raised their eyes to heaven.The multitude listened. A single word was heard, to the great surprise of the uninitiated. And this word, which echoed in every corner of the salon, was:'Cathedral!'Then the orator returned to his place; another rose and cried out: 'Ogive!'A third looked round him and ventured:'Egyptian Pyramid!'The assembly applauded, and then it was lost in profound reflection." To the Anglo-Saxon mind - and, it should be said, to many Frenchmen - this is Parisian literary life at its worst: the posturing, the pretension, the self-regard, masquerading under the name of art. Yet Hugo is the man who wrote a handful of the most exquisite lyrics - 'Victor Hugo, helas!'said Gide when someone asked him to name the finest French poet - and at least one novel judged to be supreme. In his person, he sums up all that is most monsterous in writerly vanity; in his best work he transcended his failings. How did he do it? How did a monster come to write the masterpiece that is Les Miserables? * In an early essay on Scott, Hugo prophesies that"After the picturesque but prosaic novel of Walter Scott, there will still be another novel to create ... It is the novel which is at once drama and epic, picturesque and poetic, real and ieal, true and great, the novel which will enshrine Walter Scott in Homer."These words were written in 1823, just after the publication of his own first novel, Han d'Islande, and there is no doubt that Hugo had himself in mind as the man who could 'enshrine Walter Scott as Homer'. Anyone who can still get through this book may take a rather different view. Set in seventeeth-century Norway and dripping with gore on every page, Han d'Islande is nearer to the Gothic horror tradition than to Scott. For the man who really succeeded in reconciling the genres of epic and historic fiction we have to look further afield, to Hugo's own admirerer, Tolstoy. Yet it was Tolstoy who vindicated the French novelist's early ambition by judging Les Miserables one of the world's great novels, if not the greates, and acknowledged its effect on his own work. Les Miserables was completed in 1862, shortly before the Russian novelist began War and Peace. The two novels are set in the same period. It cannot be said that Hugo had much to teach his junior about structure or characterization; like all his attempts at epic, in prose and verse, Les Miserables rambles, there are huge digressions and absurdities of plot, the characters are often thin, the action melodramatic. But in spacious, vigorous story-telling, in the use of an historical framework, in the relating of human events to a larger philosophical and spiritual context, in the deployment of fiction as a social and political weapon, in the exalatation of 'the people' as a supreme authority, in the treatment of suffering as a dominant theme - in all these matters, Hugo exerted a profound influence on Tolstoy. Without his example, War and Peace might have been a very different novel. Perhaps the most extraordinary point of contact between them concerns Napoleon. One might expect the emperor to intrigue European writers in the early nineteenth century, as he intrigues Byron, Balzac and Stendhal, among others, but by the 1860s almost half a century had passed since Waterloo, yet Hugo and Tolstoy are still trying to unravel the mystery of one whose shadow falls across the entire century. For Tolstoy, Napoleon is pre-eminently a human being - an extraordinary man, certainly, the instrument of destiny, but still a man. For Hugo he is more like a superman, a mysterious brooding presence with almost divine powers. The point is made by an ironic comparison between Napoleon and Wellington. Hugo's argument seems to be that Napoleon ought to have won Waterloo by sheer force of genius - indeed, that he did win it, when judged according to the rules of natural justice - but that Wellington achieved a victory on points by taking more care to spy out the lay of the battlefield and to estimate the balance of forces. Calculation is everything to the mundane Englishman, imagination nothing. When lightning flashes round the emperor's head, the duke looks like a very ordinary man. While Napoleon surveys the heavens, Wellington consults his watch. Clearly, the image of general as genius was vital to Hugo's own project of himself as a literary Napoleon, but there is more to it than that. Commentators have often lamented the digression on Waterloo which is quite unnecessary to the plot and, coming early in the book, throws it decisively out of its narrative stride. But Hugo, though careless of structural refinement, does have a more serious purpose here - a purpose from which Tolstoy must have learnt much, and not only in his description of Borodino. For Hugo, who in turn learnt so much from Scott, grasped the fact that by imprinting the significance of a decisive historical moment on the minds of his readers he could hugely enlarge the scope of his novel. Precisely because Les Miserables is about little people, the history of a great man is one means of linking their petty lives with the Infinite. (The link is made touchingly explicit in the chapter called 'In Which Little Gavroche Takes Advantage of Napoleon the Great'.) Even events as great as Waterloo, we are told, can hinge on details: the location of a ditch, the arrival of a platoon. Conversely, the most trivial life may exemplify a great truth - and in that sense, all lives are equally significant, for every existence embodies these truths. At the same time, Hugo's treatment of Waterloo makes it clear that realities and appearances diverge as much in everyday life as they do in historical interpretation - and that the two divergences are linked. What a post-Waterloo Frenchman thinks of Napoleon helps to shape what he thinks of himself. Sometimes we try to envision history in our own image; sometimes we use it to understand ourselves; at all times we are formed by it without our knowledge. One function of fiction is to help us achieve that knowledge. Les Miserables is, among other things, an attempt to explain the people of the mid-nineteenth century to themselves. Jean Valjean finds himself in a certain situation because he is a poor Frenchman at a particular time. This is one version of Fate - the sociological and political explanation of things. But Valjean is like Waterloo: his life also has a deeper purpose, a hidden meaning. Hugo has a number of names for this meaning - Fate, Destiny, God, the Infinite. But whatever he calls it, we observe a complex dialogue throughout the book between the surface causes of Valjean's predicament - poverty and ignorance - and their deeper meaning, to which he penetrates through suffering.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Deluxe edition (February 24, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1456 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143107569
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143107569
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.24 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 2.58 x 8.45 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #34,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Victor Hugo
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Victor Marie Hugo (/ˈhjuːɡoʊ/; French: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry and then from his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). He also produced more than 4,000 drawings, which have since been admired for their beauty, and earned widespread respect as a campaigner for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.
Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism; his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon. His legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French franc banknotes.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Étienne Carjat [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Christine Donougher
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B. Pearce

Incredible novel, incredible edition

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2023

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This was my first time reading Les Miserables and it is one of my favorite novels of all time. I cannot speak highly enough of it.

Regarding the edition, the cover artwork is amazing. There is the lustrous quality paper of Penguin Deluxe with the uneven edges [I believe meant to imitate when pages came folded and you cut them the first time you read a book.] The translation seems very good as far as I can tell, and I prefer the author making it clear when characters are switching between "Vous and Tu" instead of leaving it lightly implied.

I have only read this edition of Les Miserables, but I cannot recommend the novel highly enough and can't see any reason why someone should choose an edition besides this one.

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Er Jwee Chiek 余瑞傑

A brilliant translation by Christine Donougher. Shed buckets and buckets of tears in the finale.

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2017

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At the time of my review, this was the newest English translation of Hugo's masterpiece offered by Penguin publishing that absolutely compelled me to indulge in my favourite piece of literature a second time told anew. For novices to Hugo's gigantic work it is quite daunting for those who tire of long tales. In addition, confronted with any new book, we wonder whether the book is worthy of our time investment and efforts to cross check with detailed annotations and footnotes. Certainly more difficult these days given the enormous plethora of distractions competing for our attention in our modern living, the smartphone being the chief culprit. But seriously, if we do dare embark on this life changing experience (characters in the book and also the reader's) by reading Les Miserables, the correct question we must first ask
ourselves is whether we are worthy and knowledgeable enough to turn the gilded pages of Victor Hugo's masterpiece that drips with words of gold in every page. Much to my astonishment after concluding my second read with buckets of tears (I am sentimental but am moved only by giant geniuses like Hugo) it dawned on me that I really have not read it at all 30 years ago. But I remember clearly that I turned to Hugo chiefly to escape my wretchedness (pun intended) in the 2.5 years compulsory military service. Given my youth then, I had not chalked up enough life's hard experiences yet to have full empathy for much of the suffering and the depth of french history especially the french revolution to grasp all the nuances Hugo would have wanted his readers to appreciate. Today, with >30 years of life's heavy baggage accumulated, I am less unworthy and more adequate a reader because I have imbibed so much more of Hugo's spectacular offering of humanity at its worst and best. There are diamonds in every page of his over 1500 pages novel (English version, the French is >1900 pages). I wish I could read Hugo's work in French, but like all illiterates in French, we appreciate the great work of translations. To say the least, Les Misérables translated by Christine Donougher is a brilliant new, faithful and unabridged version I believe ( leap of faith since I haven't read it in French) of Victor Hugo's thrilling masterpiece, with an introduction by Robert Tombs. The annotations and footnotes are exceptionally brilliant. Cross checking them all as one reads along is essential to know the historical characters and the circumstantial events revolving the story with the French revolution being the chief most tumultuous and had the most far reaching impact on social divide and inequality. It led to the overthrow of Monarchy and establishment of the Republic. The citizen was born with a new hope in a society based on Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Hugo left no stone upturned, no plant not described, no object of the barricade unmentioned when he described the French landscape of past. Such was Hugo's meticulous style but welcomed minutia on details, none more so than his detailed description of the Paris sewer system. So convincing was Hugo in portraying the subterranean maze as a treacherous stinking route of escape that it was an impossible escape and rescue mission for any human. Thus heightening the immense task undertaken by our hero in carrying an unconscious full grown man to emerge alive at the end after navigating 4 miles of slimy putrid ditches in pitch darkness most of the journey. In comparison, Shawshank would have been a walk in the park. And our hero didn't even like the man he was rescuing because he knew his sole happiness in life would be taken away by this unconscious young man. But he did it because he was superhuman and an angel. My first read nearly 30 years ago was a translation by another fabulous woman, Isabella Hapgood, before kindle and digital books were in existence. Going to the annotations then was a chore and was often neglected which inevitably hampered my level of appreciation for the book. Despite that, my first read shook me to the core by the breadth and depth of Hugo's masterpiece on the wretched human condition and the hand of God in redeeming His elects, Jean Valjean chief amongst many in the book. Desiring a second enjoyment, I researched and sampled the various translations on offer after a 30 years gap, this time round on digital by kindle. For translations I always go to the reliable and more expensive Penguin publishers first before looking at other publishers. Les Misérables with the unique English title "The Wretched", convinced me to be the best after some comparisons of the first chapter of various translations. A Penguin yet again. The audacity of translating the title "Les Miserables" to "The Wretched" was ingenious and original to set itself apart from the other translations. As a genuine connoisseur of literature of the finest kind that I consider myself, I cannot emphasise enough to all non French speaking readers on the careful choice of the best translation and to spare no expenses for the best experience one must have. Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" is the finest of them all. Its the top notch Beluga caviar and it is the finest of the finest brandy ever distilled. As you would pay top dollar to enjoy them so too should you for the pride and joy of classic literature, the world (Hugo in this case) has to offer to the universe. Hugo's fine work must undoubtedly be also the pride and joy of God since it showcases His will on mankind. God has already shown in the story of Job, the finest men can be inflicted with life's greatest catastrophes and grief, and in the gospels that the most perfect man must walk the hardest road. Hugo's premise in Les Miserables was exactly that providence is responsible for the wretchedness in our lives. Providence can also lift the wretchedness from the most wretched and turn them into the greatest salt and light of the world. There are many wretched characters in Hugo's les miserables. Once you have read them, you can play the game of picking the most wretched of them all. The drama of "road to Damascus" was played out several times in the book. Like the Jew persecutor, Saul transformed into fiery apostle Paul, so too was a hardened ex convict touched by the hand of God and was transformed into a loving angel to the world of wretched souls that crossed his path.

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Michael Kelley

Page-turning suspense

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2024

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Wow, this book by Victor Hugo keeps you turning pages to find out what will become of characters that are painted so beautifully in the text. I feel like I know and have walked with Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, and Marius. And the end of the book really drives home the point happiness is always worth striving for even if we ourselves cannot attain it because we have a responsibility to those we love. God will take the sufferings of all his creatures into account and work everything into his beautiful story of redemption.

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Amazon Customer

Why did I wait so long??

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2024

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It has taken me 45 years to get around to reading this book. I think the reputation of it being a musical and the French title made me feel like it wouldn’t interest me. Holy crap was I wrong! Jean Valjean is easily in my top 5 characters in the history of literature! This book took me most of the year to read…and it was worth every minute. This translation is sublime and having the endnotes at my fingertips in Kindle is priceless. If you plan on reading this book masterpiece, I recommend this translation and the Kindle edition, hands down!

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Amazon Customer

Annotations Lacking

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2023

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Although carefully arranged and a pleasure to read this translation by C.D., I selected this edition for the annotations advertised and I find them to be lacking. Not only are they not in a footnote format (so you have to flip 1000 pages to the back of the book) - THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT SOME THINGS EVEN HAVE AN ANNOTATION! In the back the pages are titled ex) “15-25” and there is additional information written out. Flip back to the line in question and there is no asterisks, no italicized (usually), no number, symbol, anything! It is extremely frustrating when I feel I paid a premium to select this edition for the added information. And although they do seem well researched, I would have expected considerably more things to be annotated. This is an 1860s book from another country - there is a lot that can go over the reader’s head. I feel the annotations explain a lot of obscure references but not the subtleties, historical references, grammar/translation explanations, or even commentary on the book overall that I would have expected from an “Annotated Edition”.

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Nilton C. Teixeira

Brilliant!

Reviewed in Canada on April 4, 2024

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Les Miserables (also published as “The Wretched”)
A brilliant modern translation by Christine Donougher.

And what a masterpiece!

Simply magnificent! Unforgettable characters!

For drama’s lover this is a treat.

An enthralling story of broken dreams and unrequited love, sacrifice and redemption and a testament to the survival of the human spirit, set during the French Revolution.

The night before starting this book I went to the theatre to see the latest musical production of Les Miserables. It was my fifth time and it was so marvellous that I decided to finally face this book.

And what a wonderful surprise this was. Much better than I expected. But there are lots of “fillers” that perhaps are not included in the abridged version.

I do have to applaud all of those people who worked on the adaptation for the musical/play and for the movies, as they did an excellent job keeping the essence of the original story (especially William Nicholson, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Herbert Kretzmer who all wrote the screenplay for the 2012 movie adaptation directed by Tom Hooper).

I do have several free editions in ebook format, as well as another paperback by Penguin Classics which was translated by Norman Denny.

As a simple example, which may give you an idea, see below a comparison between the translations by Donougher (1) and Denny (2):

(1): “Still hidden at the corner of Rue Mondétour, irresolute and shivering, Marius had witnessed the first phase of the fighting.

(2): “Crouched at the turning of the Rue Mondétour, Marius had witnessed the beginning of the battle, still irresolute and trembling.”

(1): “Some time after the events we have described Boulatruelle had a severe shock.”

(2): “Some time after the events we have just related, Sieur Boulatruelle experienced great excitement.”

My favourite part of the book was the opening “Fantine” (Part 1). There was a lot of heart in this section that left me emotional (and how I hated the Thénardiers! In the musical they are hideous but hilarious).

e-book (Kobo) - Penguin Classics (translation by Christine Donougher and an introduction by Robert Tombs): 2011 pages (default), 623k words - unabridged

Paperback - Penguin Classics (translation by Christine Donougher and an introduction by Robert Tombs): 1456 pages, 366 chapters - unabridged

Audiobook narrated by: Adeel Akhtar, Natalie Simpson, Adrian Scarborough, Emma Fielding, John Owen-Jones
Length: 65 hrs and 41 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 2020-04-23
Publisher: Penguin Audio

PS. I had the pleasure of reading this book while simultaneously listening to the audiobook. Both were the same edition, and I can certify that the audiobook is word by word accurate.

Jesus Prieto

Excelente

Reviewed in Mexico on February 20, 2022

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De excelente calidad.

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RexTppy

5/5 for the novel, 2/5 for the kindle edition

Reviewed in Spain on March 7, 2023

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The editing of the kindle edition is broken. Only left-alignment works, making the rows unqeual. I hate reading like that. The right-alignment does not work. I even wrote the publisher, but to no avail.

Paul Thompson

An epic tale.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2021

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A vey difficult book to put down after the first few chapters, although this tome may seem rather daunting in length it draws the reader into a most studied & detailed account of life in France & Paris during the period after the first phase of the French Revolution and a classic tale of a man stealing food through the sheer necessity to feed his loved ones then having to endure nearly two decades of incarceration , we despair for him & desire that he should find some balance in the remainder of his life with a modicum of happiness & contentment , and he quickly becomes our hero, added to this Hugo intersperses the narrative with weighty reflections of the human spirit & resolve & determination , married with drama , adventure & superbly drawn characters the translation provides for an easy read despite its length .. please take time to read this wonderful book

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chris valacos

The best translation

Reviewed in Australia on March 28, 2024

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A very fine translation of a brilliant classic

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