Ninety-Three

In 1793, at the height of the French Revolution, royalist peasants rise in rebellion in the Vendée and Brittany, led by the old Marquis de Lantenac, a ruthless aristocratic general. Against him the Republic sends his own great-nephew, Gauvain, a generous young commander, with a political commissioner at his side: Cimourdain, a former priest of iron principles who was once Gauvain's tutor and loves him like a son. The war is merciless on both sides, and at a besieged castle an act of mercy by Lantenac forces each man to choose between his cause and his conscience.

Ninety-Three, published in 1874, was Victor Hugo's last novel. It includes a famous scene in Paris with the revolutionary leaders Robespierre, Danton and Marat, and asks whether a revolution can be both just and humane. This translation is by Aline Delano. Read Hugo's Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris.

Victor Hugo (1802–1885), leading voice of French Romanticism, wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and spent nearly twenty years in exile in the Channel Islands for opposing Napoleon III.

There he finished Les Misérables, the story of the convict Jean Valjean, and Toilers of the Sea; the poet Hafez Ibrahim's Arabic version of Les Misérables made it a favourite of Arab readers.