--- product_id: 6749148 title: "Les Miserables (Penguin Classics)" price: "€ 24.71" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.at/products/6749148-les-miserables-penguin-classics store_origin: AT region: Austria --- # Cultural Impact Classic Literature Timeless Storytelling Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) **Price:** € 24.71 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 📖 Unlock the Power of Storytelling! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) - **How much does it cost?** € 24.71 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.at](https://www.desertcart.at/products/6749148-les-miserables-penguin-classics) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Engaging Foreword:** Gain insights from literary experts to enhance your reading experience. - • **A Literary Masterpiece:** Dive into Victor Hugo's epic tale of redemption and revolution. - • **Perfect for Book Clubs:** Spark meaningful discussions with friends over this iconic novel. - • **Rich Historical Context:** Experience the depth of 19th-century France through vivid characters and intricate plots. - • **Penguin Classics Edition:** Enjoy a beautifully crafted paperback that stands the test of time. ## Overview Les Miserables, published by Penguin Classics, is a paperback edition of Victor Hugo's renowned novel, first released on April 29, 1982. This edition offers readers a chance to explore themes of justice, love, and redemption in a richly detailed historical setting. ## Description Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) [Hugo, Victor, Denny, Norman, Denny, Norman] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) Review: It's not a typical cheap story...reading Les Miserable is a LIFE EXPERIENCE. - Thank God I got the Kindle version for my Kindle Keyboard 3G. I read through 12% of the book before wondering 'how long will it take me to finish!!?". So I measured my reading speed pages-per-minute and estimated the total reading time for the entire book to be 64 hours. Seriously. So I took a different approach: I would read for an hour or two, then when fatigue started setting in, I pressed the "shift-sym" keyboard shortcut to activate text-to-speech, and just sat back or laid in bed while the kindle AI voice read it to me. This book famously takes place in France, and a lot of the names of people / places / streets are in French, so it's nice having the AI effortlessly pronounce them. My favorite was hearing it pronounce "Champs-Élysées" over and over again. It was pleasant, almost hypnotizing. Text-to-Speech allowed me to focus on the incredible story and not hassle through the pronunciations. Victor Hugo goes off on many tangents, such as 30+ page histories of the battle of waterloo, and the construction of the sewer system in Paris. It's quite fascinating and adds much to the story. There are many nuanced scenes that I continually go back to in my head, like the back passages behind the court room for transporting lawyers, and the one for transporting the criminals. And the ideas of whether a person can ever redeem themselves in society, contrasted with the situation that society is often times a poor judge of how to redeem oneself, and whether they should be deserving of redemption. It is an honest critique of criminal justice that is probably as relevant today as it was then. My understanding is that this "penguin classics" version has a better translation than the "free" version going around on the internet. It you're going to devote ~64 hours to an experience of life and death in old France, best put in a few bucks to get the best translation possible. For today's generation, the length of the story can be a bit jarring and leaves you wondering "will this story ever end?" I say this book is not at all to be treated as a story. It's not a television show. It's not a movie. It's not a musical. Les Miserables is an EXPERIENCE. So get the good version on Kindle, and have the AI voice continue the reading when fatigue starts to set in. Review: NOT illustrated - How can you leave anything less than 5 stars on the Norman Denny translation of Les Misérables? unless... unless! you own a paperback copy of the Penguin Classic and wanted to used said copy as a working copy that you could underline, mark up, and make notes in the margin and then have this "illustrated" hard backed copy with hopefully slightly better paper than the paperback's newspaper-like quality to have on the shelve to revisit. The illustrations? Well, there is a silhouette of a bird on the title page and there is the cover art - and that's it for that. The paper quality is no better than the paperback version. I'm not sending it back because it was a good deal and finding the Norman Denny translation is difficult (I'm still searching for an e-book version.) So, thank goodness for the quality of the author. I have a feeling that like Cervantes Don Quixote, I will be perpetually re-reading this incredible work. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | ASIN | 0140444300 | | Best Sellers Rank | #617,769 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1,081 in Classic Literature & Fiction #2,519 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,590) | | Dimensions | 5.1 x 5.11 x 7.8 inches | | ISBN-10 | 9780140444308 | | ISBN-13 | 978-0140444308 | | Item Weight | 1.8 pounds | | Language | English | | Print length | 1232 pages | | Publication date | April 29, 1982 | | Publisher | Penguin Classics | | Reading age | 18 years and up | ## Images ![Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61j5Du0EzAL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ It's not a typical cheap story...reading Les Miserable is a LIFE EXPERIENCE. *by S***4 on June 5, 2018* Thank God I got the Kindle version for my Kindle Keyboard 3G. I read through 12% of the book before wondering 'how long will it take me to finish!!?". So I measured my reading speed pages-per-minute and estimated the total reading time for the entire book to be 64 hours. Seriously. So I took a different approach: I would read for an hour or two, then when fatigue started setting in, I pressed the "shift-sym" keyboard shortcut to activate text-to-speech, and just sat back or laid in bed while the kindle AI voice read it to me. This book famously takes place in France, and a lot of the names of people / places / streets are in French, so it's nice having the AI effortlessly pronounce them. My favorite was hearing it pronounce "Champs-Élysées" over and over again. It was pleasant, almost hypnotizing. Text-to-Speech allowed me to focus on the incredible story and not hassle through the pronunciations. Victor Hugo goes off on many tangents, such as 30+ page histories of the battle of waterloo, and the construction of the sewer system in Paris. It's quite fascinating and adds much to the story. There are many nuanced scenes that I continually go back to in my head, like the back passages behind the court room for transporting lawyers, and the one for transporting the criminals. And the ideas of whether a person can ever redeem themselves in society, contrasted with the situation that society is often times a poor judge of how to redeem oneself, and whether they should be deserving of redemption. It is an honest critique of criminal justice that is probably as relevant today as it was then. My understanding is that this "penguin classics" version has a better translation than the "free" version going around on the internet. It you're going to devote ~64 hours to an experience of life and death in old France, best put in a few bucks to get the best translation possible. For today's generation, the length of the story can be a bit jarring and leaves you wondering "will this story ever end?" I say this book is not at all to be treated as a story. It's not a television show. It's not a movie. It's not a musical. Les Miserables is an EXPERIENCE. So get the good version on Kindle, and have the AI voice continue the reading when fatigue starts to set in. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ NOT illustrated *by R***Z on June 4, 2025* How can you leave anything less than 5 stars on the Norman Denny translation of Les Misérables? unless... unless! you own a paperback copy of the Penguin Classic and wanted to used said copy as a working copy that you could underline, mark up, and make notes in the margin and then have this "illustrated" hard backed copy with hopefully slightly better paper than the paperback's newspaper-like quality to have on the shelve to revisit. The illustrations? Well, there is a silhouette of a bird on the title page and there is the cover art - and that's it for that. The paper quality is no better than the paperback version. I'm not sending it back because it was a good deal and finding the Norman Denny translation is difficult (I'm still searching for an e-book version.) So, thank goodness for the quality of the author. I have a feeling that like Cervantes Don Quixote, I will be perpetually re-reading this incredible work. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hugo - The Real Master of the House *by B***L on May 24, 2000* I'm glad to see so many young people drawn to the book via the musical or the movie versions. If there were one writer I would want to know on a personal basis via his work it would have been Victor Hugo. He must have had an enormously generous heart and spirit as evidenced by his writing. This is probably the most sympathetic, almost God-like perspective of humanity that I have ever come across in literature. And what a sweeping cyclorama Hugo portrays. From the fields of Waterloo to the sewers of Paris, Hugo's eye of god sees everything. The Waterloo passages are often discarded in the abridgements, but to me they play an important part in allowing the reader to pull back and look at things from this god-like point-of-view. The great panoramic macrocosm of history is seen in conjunction with the vivid details of Jean Valjean's microcosmic struggle. Of course the characters, which I thought were rather cleverly encapsulated in the musical, are here given their true range and scope. That Hugo loved these characters is abundantly clear. This love is absorbed by the reader. Every time Jabert comes close to capturing Jean, it is as if we were in Jean's shoes. Hugo far outshines Dickens in his depiction of lower class existence in a 19th century European city. His Paris is inhabited by much more convincing urchins. All his characters in fact, are much more believable. Dickens is much more overtly sentimental. Hugo lets the story affect the reader. There is no sense of straining to convey an effect. With Dickens, I am always aware of the puppetmaster straining to get a point across. He is a polemical writer compared to Hugo. He relies on heavy-handed bathos. Hugo remains much more in the background and we are left essentially unaware of his machinations. That's why, for me, I respond more viscerally to Hugo as I respond more depply to great art in general. My primary appeal to readers is that they don't do Hugo the disservice of reading an abridged version of this novel. You may not be all that interested in the causes behind the rebellion that led to Marius's mounting of the barricade, but I assure you you will not be bored by the lengthier version. Great writers don't waste their time on superfluous details. Every word is there for a reason. Let the Master of the House display his wares in full. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.at/products/6749148-les-miserables-penguin-classics](https://www.desertcart.at/products/6749148-les-miserables-penguin-classics) --- *Product available on Desertcart Austria* *Store origin: AT* *Last updated: 2026-04-23*