The Last Day of a Condemned Man

by Victor Hugo, Arabella Ward (Translator), David Dow (Introduction)

Overview

"Before hearing my death sentence I was aware that my lungs breathed, that my heart beat, and that my body lived in the community of other men; now, I plainly saw that a barrier had sprung up between them and me. Nothing was the same as before." The imprisoned narrator of this profoundly moving novel awaits execution -- and waits, and waits. Although his guilt is undeniable, his essential humanity emerges as he struggles with the certainty of impending death.
Victor Hugo's impassioned early work carries the same power and universality as Les Misérables. A vocal opponent to the barbarity of the guillotine, Hugo attempted to arouse compassion in the service of justice. This tale distills his beliefs and offers a highly significant contribution to the ongoing debate over the death penalty. A new Foreword by activist David Dow examines the message and relevance of Hugo's story to modern society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486469980
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	06/22/2009
Series:	Dover Literature: Literary Fiction
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet and novelist. Born in Besançon, Hugo was the son of a general who served in the Napoleonic army. Raised on the move, Hugo was taken with his family from one outpost to the next, eventually setting with his mother in Paris in 1803. In 1823, he published his first novel, launching a career that would earn him a reputation as a leading figure of French Romanticism. His Gothic novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) was a bestseller throughout Europe, inspiring the French government to restore the legendary cathedral to its former glory. During the reign of King Louis-Philippe, Hugo was elected to the National Assembly of the French Second Republic, where he spoke out against the death penalty and poverty while calling for public education and universal suffrage. Exiled during the rise of Napoleon III, Hugo lived in Guernsey from 1855 to 1870. During this time, he published his literary masterpiece Les Misérables (1862), a historical novel which has been adapted countless times for theater, film, and television. Towards the end of his life, he advocated for republicanism around Europe and across the globe, cementing his reputation as a defender of the people and earning a place at Paris’ Panthéon, where his remains were interred following his death from pneumonia. His final words, written on a note only days before his death, capture the depth of his belief in humanity: “To love is to act.”

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1802

Date of Death:

May 22, 1885

Place of Birth:

Besançon, France

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Pension Cordier, Paris, 1815-18

Editorial Reviews

This impassioned early (1829) work, which depicts the "six-week death agony and . . . day-long death rattle" of a condemned prisoner awaiting execution, isn't so much fiction as it is a broadside against the barbarity of the guillotine. (The text is accompanied by a brief satirical playlet in which bureaucrats and aristocrats denounce its author as a troublemaker.) There are moments when the plight of Hugo's nameless protagonist and narrator stirs faint anticipatory echoes of (the later) Les Misérables. But the novella's awkward swings between high emotion and jejune sociological comment and its profusion of accusatory rhetorical questions make it of only minimal literary interest.

Kirkus Reviews

Absolutely the most real and truthful of everything that Hugo wrote.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Hugo . . . provides a convincing reminder of what political argument should really be about” - The Observer

From the Publisher