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Zusatztext “Rich and gorgeous. This is the [translation] to read… and if you are flying! just carry it under your arm as you board! or better still! rebook your holiday and go by train! slowly! page by page.” —Jeanette Winterson! The Times (London) “[A] magnificent story… marvelously captured in this new unabridged translation by Julie Rose.” — The Denver Post “A new translation by Julie Rose of Hugo’s behemoth classic that is as racy and current and utterly arresting as it should be.” — Buffalo News (editor’s choice) “Vibrant and readable! idiomatic and well suited to a long narrative! [Julie Rose’s new translation of Les Miserables ] is closer to the captivating tone Hugo would have struck for his own contemporaries.” —Diane Johnson “A lively! dramatic! and wonderfully readable translation of one of the greatest 19th-century novels.” —Alison Lurie “Some of us may have read Les Miserables back in the day! but… between Gopnik and Rose! you’ll get two introductions that will offer you all the pleasures of your college instruction with none of the pain.” — The Agony Column Informationen zum Autor Victor Hugo; adapted by Monica Kulling Klappentext The classic novel--and hit Broadway show--about escaped convict Jean Valjean has been adapted with easy-to-read text! large type! and short chapters. This engaging adaptation of the timeless tale is ideal for reluctant readers and kids not yet ready to tackle the original. I. Monsieur Myriel In 1815, Monsieur Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was bishop of Digne.1 He was an elderly man of about seventy-five and he had occupied the seat of Digne since 1806. There is something we might mention that has no bearing whatsoever on the tale we have to tell—not even on the background. Yet it may well serve some purpose, if only in the interests of precision, to jot down here the rumors and gossip that had circulated about him the moment he first popped up in the diocese. True or false, what is said about people often has as much bearing on their lives and especially on their destinies as what they do. Monsieur Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Aix parliament, a member of the noblesse de robe.2 They reckoned his father had put him down to inherit his position and so had married him off very early in the piece when he was only eighteen or twenty, as they used to do quite a lot in parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, married or no, had, they said, set tongues wagging. He was a good-looking young man, if on the short side, elegant, charming, and witty; he had given the best years of his life thus far to worldly pursuits and love affairs. Then the Revolution came along, events spiraled, parliamentary families were wiped out, chased away, hunted, scattered. Monsieur Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy soon after the Revolution broke out. His wife died there of the chest infection she’d had for ages. They had no children. What happened next in the destiny of Monsieur Myriel? The collapse of the old society in France, the fall of his own family, the tragic scenes of ’93,3 which were, perhaps, even more frightening for émigrés4 watching them from afar with the magnifying power of dread—did these things cause notions of renunciation and solitude to germinate in his mind? Was he, in the middle of the distractions and amorous diversions that filled his life, suddenly hit by one of those mysterious and terrible jolts that sometimes come and strike at the heart, bowling over the man public calamities couldn’t shake, threatening as these did only his existence and his fortune? No one could say; all that was known was that, when he came back from Italy, he was a priest. In 1804,5 Monsieur Myriel was the curé of Brignolles.6 He was already old and lived like a real recluse in profound seclusion. Around the t...
