The first new translation in over a century of the the brilliant
epic novel that inspired Les Miserables From July 1842 through
October 1843, Parisians rushed to the newspaper each week for the
latest installment of Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, one of
France's first serial novels. The suspenseful story of Rodolphe, a
magnetic hero of noble heart and shadowy origins, played out over
ninety issues, garnering wild popularity and leading many to call
it the most widely read novel of the 19th century. Sue's novel
created the city mystery genre and inspired a raft of successors,
including Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo. The
intricate melodrama of The Mysteries of Paris unfolds around a
Paris where the fortunes of the rich and the poor are helplessly
tangled, despite the vast gulf between them. In the Cite, a seedy
neighborhood where criminals gather, Rodolphe encounters a young
prostitute of breathtaking purity who goes by the name Songbird. He
saves her from an attack by a ruffian called the Slasher, setting
off the dominoes of an epic narrative traversing the ranks of
French society. As Rodolphe pursues his own mysterious quest for
redemption, a circle of characters from all walks of life forms
around him-some following his every move and others gravitating to
his boundless generosity. From the nefarious pairing of the
Schoolmaster and the Owl, a hardened criminal and an unfathomably
cruel street merchant, to Morel, a gem-cutter so virtuous he
refuses to steal even the smallest ruby to feed his starving
family, the lines between good and evil in Sue's Paris are always
clear, but never unyielding. Though the immense literary and
historical resonance of Sue's magnum opus has been for years
overshadowed by Hugo's achievement, this stunning new translation
is a revelation, promising to bring the unmitigated pleasures of
Sue's cliffhangers and criminals to a new century of readers.
Sensational, steamy, tightly-plotted, pulpy, proto-socialist,
heartbreaking, and riveting, The Mysteries of Paris is doubtless
one of the most entertaining and influential works to emerge from
the 19th century.
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