It's no mystery why Victor Hugo's Les Miserables will forever be timely to every human society everywhere. It's all there in Hugo's own preface to the first edition . . . .
Preface to Les Miserables
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and
customs, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization,
artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine,
with human frailty; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of
man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood
by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; as long as, in certain regions,
social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and form a yet more extended
point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this
cannot be useless.
Victor Hugo
Les Miserables
Hauteville House, Isle of Guernsey
1862
