A review by sinceremercy
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables by David Bellos

2.0

This is worth reading if you already know a great deal about Les Miserables, so as to judge for yourself the validity of the author's takes ... many of which are incredibly dubious. These range from (mostly minor and somewhat pedantic) factual errors about parts of the text, to frankly strange opinions about the historical time period such as the suggestion that Thenardier could not possibly have a successful business in the United States slave trade because his port of entry is New York, where they had already abolished slavery. Part 4 is definitely the most questionable, where we are subjected to the author's opinions about the politics of Les Miserables including such gems as an implicit comparison of Enjolras to Hitler.

Still, underneath all of that there is some good information about the story of Les Miserables's publication and a few sections that provide genuinely useful insights (such as the chapter about money in Les Mis and the different words used to talk about it), and I don't actually regret reading it. All in all, it's OK, but I have a lot of quibbles with the author on a number of different subjects.