The Man Who Laughs
by Victor Hugo | 
The Black Sheep
by Honore de Balzac | 
Cousin Pons
by Honore de Balzac | 
The Chouans
by Honore de Balzac |
A Harlot High and Low
by Honore de Balzac | 
Lucien Leuwen
by Stendhal |
Colonel Chabert
by Honore de Balzac | 
The Lily of the Valley
by Honore de Balzac | 
Bouvard and Pecuchet
by Gustave Flaubert |
The Kill
by Emile Zola |
The Debacle
by Emile Zola | 
Strong as Death
by Guy de Maupassant | 
Lost Illusions
by Honore de Balzac | 
Pierre and Jean
by Guy de Maupassant | 
The Ladies' Paradise
by Emile Zola | 
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | 
Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo | 
In Dubious Battle
by John Steinbeck | 
The Great Indian Novel
by Shashi Tharoor | 
A Man of the People
by Chinua Achebe |
Victor Hugo, the shining light of French Romanticism, was an indefatigable campaigner against the death penalty. This unique anthology of his controversial writings on crime and punishment reveals the author's generosity of spirit and his pity for the condemned. However, as always in Hugo, a degree of endearing self-glorification is never absent. The Last Day of a Condemned Man, while not seeking to minimalize its protagonist's responsibility for the murder he has committed, reminds the reader of the mental anguish endured by a man condemned to a cell. Claude Gueux is a documentary account of the martyrdom of a prisoner driven to crime by poverty, and to murder by the casual brutality of a head warder. Also included are Hugo's moving diary entries recording his visits to the prisons of La Roquette and the Conciergerie.