Les Misérables
Victor Hugo · 1862
Hugo's case for human dignity against the machinery of poverty and law. Jean Valjean and Javert are the two poles of moral philosophy, and the novel refuses to let either win cleanly. Published in 1862, it was an immediate sensation across Europe. Nobody who finishes it forgets it.
The case against
Hugo opens with fifty pages on a bishop's household before Valjean appears, halts Part Two for the Battle of Waterloo, and later delivers essays on convents, sewers, and street slang. The coincidences would embarrass Dickens; people cross paths in a city of a million whenever the plot requires it. Fourteen hundred pages, several hundred of them lecture.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.