Charlemagne biography book
Charlemagne the god biography!
The Greatest French Novels
Tell me about Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862).
Charlemagne biography book summary
I read Les Misérables when I was a kid and then re-read it last summer and, do you know, I am now convinced that it is the greatest novel of all time. Every story in the world is somewhere in there. It’s extremely sentimental, it’s extremely historical and digressive, there are parts of it that are boring as hell – but that’s true of War and Peace and other great novels.
Overall, it’s such a compendious, wonderful thing, full of gems.
Such as?
Charlemagne biography book
Oh, the description of the Battle of Waterloo, a love story between Marius and Cosette which is absolutely heart-rending, actions of kindness and grace, wonderful chapters on the Paris underworld of the 1820s… There’s a fantastic chapter near the end where Valjean carries Marius through the sewers which is one amazing horror story.
How was Les Misérables received at the time?
It was an event bigger than the launch of Titanic and Avatar put