The Last Day of a Condemned Man

by Victor Hugo, Christopher Moncrieff (Translator)

Overview

Part of Alma’s 101 Pages series, The Last Day of a Condemned Man is very relevant to modern society and the ongoing debate over the death penalty. This edition includes Preface to the 1832 edition, a manifest of Hugo’s personal opinions, A Comedy about a Tragedy and Claude Gueux, an early example of “true crime” fiction

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847498700
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Series:	Alma Classics 101 Pages
Pages:	101
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(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