Yves Gohin Book order (chronological)

Solange es durch Gesetze und Sitten eine soziale Verdammnis gibt, die inmitten der Zivilisation künstlich Höllen schafft und das göttliche Schicksal mit menschlicher Fatalität kompliziert; solange die drei Probleme des Jahrhunderts – die Degradierung des Menschen durch das Proletariat, der Verfall der Frau durch Hunger und die Atrophie des Kindes durch Nacht – nicht gelöst sind; solange in bestimmten Regionen soziale Asphyxie möglich ist; in anderen Worten, und aus einer noch umfassenderen Perspektive, solange es auf der Erde Unwissenheit und Elend gibt, werden Bücher wie dieses nicht nutzlos sein.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) It has been said that Victor Hugo has a street named after him in virtually every town in France. A major reason for the singular celebrity of this most popular and versatile of the great French writers is "Les Miserables "(1862). In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre. "Les Miserables "is at once a tense thriller that contains one of the most compelling chase scenes in all literature, an epic portrayal of the nineteenth-century French citizenry, and a vital drama--highly particularized and poetic in its rendition but universal in its implications--of the redemption of one human being.

Mess Lethierry est propriétaire de La Durande, un steamer échoué sur un écueil par la machination criminelle de son capitaine, le sieur Clubin. Fou de rage à l'idée que le moteur révolutionnaire de son steamer soit définitivement perdu, Lethierry promet de donner la main de sa nièce Déruchette à celui qui récupèrera la machine de l'épave coincée entre les deux rochers de l'écueil Douvres au large de Guernesey. Gilliatt, pêcheur aussi robuste que rêveur, mais surtout épris de Déruchette, accepte le défi. Après maintes péripéties, notamment sa lutte contre les éléments et la pieuvre, Gilliatt réussit sa mission.

Ninety-three, the last of Victor Hugo's novels, is regarded by many including such diverse critics as Robert Louis Stevenson and André Maurois as his greatest work. 1793, Year Two of the Republic, saw the establishment of the National Convention, the execution of Louis XVI, the Terror, and the monarchist revolt in the Vendée, brutally suppressed by the Republic. Hugo's epic follows three protagonists through this tumultuous year: the noble royalist de Lantenac; Gauvain, who embodies a benevolent and romantic vision of the Republic; and Cimourdain, whose principles are altogether more robespierrean.The conflict of values culminates in a dramatic climax on the scaffold.