Les MiserableVictor Hugo
Les Miserable
by Victor Hugo · first published 2013
3mentions
1recommended by
3HN commenters
2017–2025first – last mentioned
33% recommend33% neutral33% critical
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I can’t read Les Miserable in its original French (despite 5 years of high school French class), but I love it in translation. Does that make me functionally illiterate?
on “College English majors can't read” ↗Victor Hugo was born to make Tolstoy seem laconic. Tolstoy can be prolix, but Austerlitz and Borodino are critical to the action of the novel. Waterloo has a minor plot justification inn Les Miserable, but most of the twelve chapters on Waterloo are just Hugo's excuse for spinning his theories.
on “On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”” ↗…with expository sections interspersed with sections that directly advance the plot. I quite liked that about the Grapes of Wrath. I'm not sure if I take issue with the exposition/advancement ratio in Les Miserable, or if I feel less of a connection with the period Les Miserables is set in. For children or not, I certainly won't hold The Princess Bride up as example of greatness. I would claim that the fact that…
on “How Victor Hugo came to write “Les Misérables”” ↗