Robert Bly once said of a poem by Wallace Stevens that "it was as bad a poem as it is possible for a genius to write." I thought of that when reading this book. After Les Miserables and Notre Dame de Paris, it's hard to imagine that this work flowed from the same pen. There are flashes of the human

A real page turner in the end

This book turned out to be quite a surprise. I read it in the original French for my book club. At first I found the book rather dry with a lot of tedious and seemingly unnecessary description. Victor Hugo is quite wordy, but I find that to be a trend among many 19th cen

3 1/2 stars. Political intrigue, dynastic messiness, worker uprisings, and a bandit in Hugo's first novel, written at 17 (and you can tell).

سبق فى تعليقى على أعمال هيجو أن قلت أن أحداث الرواية لدى هيجو هى أكثر تعقيدا من شخصياته - وهذا لا يتعارض مع كونه يضع شخصياته بوضوح - فنجده يغرق فى تشابك الأحداث ويتمسك بوحدة التأثيرات تلك التأثيرات الخفية التى لا تدركها العقول مباشرة أو هى لا تدركها على الإطلاق فأغلب الأحداث والشخصيات يؤثر كل منها ف

Hugo's first novel shows scant traces of the brilliance to come but it's a ripping tale of adventure and intrigue with a monstrous villain, the author's first monster, though hardly a sympathetic one. Many of the chapters are made up almost entirely of conversations, which makes me wonder if the nov