Les Misérables

Book summary

Freed after nineteen years in the galleys for a stolen loaf, Jean Valjean finds neither work nor shelter, until a bishop takes him in. A different man under a false name, he takes in Cosette, daughter of a working woman dead in destitution, and raises her in hiding. Inspector Javert, who cannot conceive that a convict changes, pursues him across France to the barricades of 1832. The novel explores poverty, law, redemption and what society does with those it condemns. Hugo binds a few lives to the portrait of a century and to a plea of his own.