Les Misérables

The first new Penguin Classics translation in forty years of Victor Hugo s masterpiece
The subject of the world s longest-running musical and the recent Academy Award nominated and BAFTA-winning film starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, "Les Miserables"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 nearly 150 years ago. This exciting new translation 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."

Victor Hugo (1802-1885), novelist, poet, and dramatist, is one of the most important of French Romantic writers. Among his best-known works are The Hunchback of Notre Dame(1831) and Les Miserables(1862).

Kenneth C. Mondschein has a Ph.D in history from Fordham University (defense passed December 18, 2009). His expertise is in Western history from antiquity to the present, with a specializations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, global expansion and colonization, and the history of science and technology. He also holds a Master of Arts in History from Boston University.