"One of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world." —Upton Sinclair "The greatest of all novels." —Leo Tolstoy "Hugo is unquestionably the most powerful talent that has appeared in France in the nineteenth century." —Fyodor Dostoyevsky "I sobbed and wailed and thought [books] were the greatest things." —Susan Sontag «Les Misérables» is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.