In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean -- unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert -- Victor Hugo achieved the rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre. "Les Miserables" is at once a thriller that contains one of the most compelling chase scenes in literature (a pursuit through the sewers of Paris), an epic portrayal of the 19th-century French citizenry, and a vital drama of the redemption of one human being Less
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