Les Miserables: Through the Timeless Immortal Mind of Victor Hugo

Book Review: Transforming injustice into heroism, love, vindication, and ultimate redemption.

Photo by Gift Habeshaw

Dear Reader,

Kindly stay for AT LEAST 30 SECONDS. Don’t kill the writers’ reader ratio.

Non-Medium subscribers, read this story here — FREE.

I’ve been into Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, going leisurely at it since the beginning of February. Reputed to be one of the longest pieces of European literature in the English language, I, at last, finished this behemoth on June 1st.

Les Misérables is simple. It is the story of an escaped convict, Jean Valjean, who determines to reform after being saved by the Bishop of Digne. Recalcitrant and implacable, Javert, the policeman wants to see him rightfully punished according to the law — life imprisonment as a galley slave.

Fantine, a dead prostitute entrusted her illegitimate daughter, Cosette, into Valjean’s care. We see the sinister thread of a relentlessly evil inn keeping couple, the Thénardiers, and their urchin children, Éponine and Gavroche.

We also met and followed the course of Marius, who falls in love with Cosette, and who is the son of a Napoleonic hero who died believing…