The Man Who Laughs
By Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood.
The Man Who Laughs (“L’Homme qui Rit”) was called by its author “A Romance of English History,” and was written during the period Hugo spent in exile in Guernsey. Like The Toilers of the Sea, its immediate predecessor, the main theme of the story is human heroism, confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind chance. As a passionate cry on behalf of the tortured and deformed, and the despised and oppressed of the world, The Man Who Laughs is irresistible. Of it Hugo himself says in the preface: “The true title of this book should be “Aristocracy’”—inasmuch as it was intended as an arraignment of the nobility for their vices, crimes, and selfishness. The Man Who Laughs was first published in 1869.
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