Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

I vividly remember finishing Les Miserables; it was the only book I brought with me on a five-week trip living with a host family in Peru. I went through a “classics” reading phase in high school, but this was the first one I’d read in a while and it definitely made up for it.

The novel follows Jean Valjean, a former convict who breaks parole and spends years rebuilding his life under a new identity. After rescuing the orphaned Cosette from her abusive guardians, he raises her while constantly evading Inspector Javert, whose unwavering belief in the law makes him relentless in his pursuit.

The story weaves together the lives and struggles of these characters, all intersecting in a turbulent Paris. As Cosette grows up, she falls in love with the young revolutionary Marius against the backdrop of rising political unrest. The 1832 June Rebellion erupts, drawing several characters into the barricades.

A recurring theme is how acts of kindness and personal growth can push back against rigid systems of law and punishment. The novel shows the weight of poverty and social inequality, illustrating how circumstances can shape a life as much as individual choices. Through it all, Hugo keeps returning to fundamental human needs – dignity, hope, and connection – in a world that can often be relentlessly harsh. It reminds me of a quote from El olvido que seremos by Héctor Abad Faciolince:

“My grandfather sometimes commented about me: ‘This child needs a firm hand.’ But my father would answer: ‘If he needs it, life will provide it – life itself is harsh enough, and I won’t help.’”

Hugo drew heavily from his own observations for Les Miserables: witnessing petty arrests and street poverty, visiting the Toulon prison, and living during political uprisings in Paris. Many details in the novel come directly from scenes he recorded in his notebooks. For Hugo, the setting was modern-day reality; for us, it’s nearly 200 years ago – but the human element is relevant across time. The pitch for the novel in his own words: 

“I don’t know whether it will be read by everyone, but it is meant for everyone. It addresses England as well as Spain, Italy as well as France, Germany as well as Ireland. Social problems go beyond frontiers. Humankind’s wounds do not stop at the blue and red lines drawn on maps. Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Miserables knocks at the door and says: ‘open up, I am here for you.’”

It’s a long book. Hugo organizes the narrative into five volumes, each broken into books and then into chapters – 48 books and 365 chapters in total. He also includes many “digressions;” roughly a quarter of the text consists of reflective essays that don’t advance the plot at all, covering topics like monastic life, the sewer system, and Paris’s street children. If you’d rather skip those parts, abridged versions trim the text while keeping the main ideas intact. Even these versions are more than 700 pages, so you’re still getting plenty of the original story.

I enjoy the winding structure of Les Misérables, but its length definitely requires a commitment. Maybe save it for a trip like I did to give yourself the time to dive in. The novel is a perfect example of why I think reading is so important: it shows perspectives we might never encounter in our own lives and teaches us to be better people by revealing both the good and the bad in humanity. It’s one of my personal favorites among all the classics I’ve read.