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Product Description
Product Description
Ninety-three, the last of Victor Hugo’s novels, is regarded by many – including such diverse critics as Robert Louis Stevenson and André Maurois – as his greatest work. 1793, Year Two of the Republic, saw the establishment of the National Convention, the execution of Louis XVI, the Terror, and the monarchist revolt in the Vendée, brutally suppressed by the Republic. Hugo’s epic follows three protagonists through this tumultuous year: the noble royalist de Lantenac; Gauvain, who embodies a benevolent and romantic vision of the Republic; and Cimourdain, whose principles are altogether more robespierrean. The conflict of values culminates in a dramatic climax on the scaffold. Following a distinguished career as a civil servant, James Hogarth acquired a reputation as a versatile and punctilious translator. His translations span travel guides, archaeological texts, and novels. In 2002 he won the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for his English translation of Victor Hugo’s Travailleurs de la Mer. He died in 2006.
About the Author
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a novelist, poet and dramatist, most important of French Romantic writers. Among Hugo's best-known works are The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables. Hugo invented his own version of the historical novel, combining the local color and historical detail of Honore de Balzac and the spiritual discourse of George Sand.
Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. He was given at his death a national funeral. It was attended by two million people. Victor Hugo is buried in the Pantheon. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bracing,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ninety-three (Paperback)
I read this because Ayn Rand wrote somewhere that this was one of her favorite novels, even though Hugo was a socialist. I often objected to Rand's twisting her esthetic responses into dogma, but she was right on this one. This is a story of human courage and nobility amidst brutality and suffering. The setting is civil war during the French Revolution in 1793 (thus the title). Several plot threads come together, including a mother desparately seeking her children. Highly recommended. This is the one Hugo novel that would make a film without much distortion, but I don't think Hollywood's ever touched it - which is probably for the best.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mixed, but ended well,
By
This review is from: Ninety-three (Kindle Edition)
This was rather a mixed bag. It started and ended well in terms of plot dynamic, though had a fairly lengthy and overblown descriptive phase in the middle. The final section in particular was a very moving and gripping exploration of the dilemmas of revolution and human nature and whether the end justifies the means, centred around the fate of three small children, who are portrayed in typical 19th century style as innocent angels. This is not Les Miserables, it lacks the grandeur and sense of scale and epic story telling of that masterpiece. But it did raise in my estimation in the last quarter.I should add that this digital version was very badly transcribed, with a great many errors that spoiled my reading pleasure to some extent.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
over-done, unbelievable, ridiculously symbolic,
By
This review is from: Ninety-Three (Paperback)
As I try to get through the classic novels, I opened this one with great anticipation and curiosity. Unfortunately, I thought it was really bad, with the worst characteristics of the Romantic style.
The book starts off in the sea, with a counter-revolutionary aristocrat about to be delivered to the shores of Brittany. Then there is a whole chapter where a cannon rips free in the ship's hold, so detailed and melodramatic that it can only be there to symbolise something-everything that will fillow in the novel. The tone is surrealistic, with moralising asides thrown in as the cannon crushes sailors left and right. From there, the book just plummets downhill: it turns out that the aristo's ward, who is as good as he is evil, is the opposing representative from Revolutionary France. There is also a Revolutionary hanging judge, a guardian of ideology, who just so happens to have been the boy's tutor who loved him as the son he never had. Etc., etc., getting more and more outlandish as the plot thickens. There is even a section of dialogue, where the guillotine talks of its task and function, also dripping with the crudest symbolism. Of course, the end, which I will leave to the reader's imagination, is supposed to summarise how the Revolution ate its own children, oozing with puerile irony. While there are some good points to the novel - in particular the scenes with Marat, Robespierre, and Danton in debate - they pale in comparison to the ridiculous coincidences and gushing moralistic melodrama. Hugo may be one of the few classic authors who needed films to edit out the poor plot devices he employed. His work makes great films, but the full novels are simply over the top.
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