David Bellos will discuss his book, The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables (Farrar, Straus and Giroux $27) at Labyrinth Books on Thursday, April 6 at 6 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Humanities Council.

According to Michael Lindgren in The Washington Post, “Bellos’s book is a major accomplishment. His warm and engaging study of Victor Hugo’s 1862 masterpiece renews faith in the idea, so fundamental to the mysterious attraction of literature, that great books of whatever age continue to be worthwhile objects of attention. In applying a melange of literary criticism, linguistics, political science, and history to the study of one of the best-known, if least-understood great books of all time, he illuminates the work in a way that transcends conventional literary criticism. Bellos displays a dazzling range of erudition with lightness and easy wit, and almost every section of his book bears surprising insights …. He writes with clarity and grace about the complex political turbulence of 19th-century France and its effect on Hugo …. The section on the publication of Les Misérables is one of the most informative accounts of the mechanics of the 19th-century book business that I have ever read.”

David Bellos is a translator of modern French fiction and the author of several prize-winning biographies of French literary figures. Is That a Fish in Your Ear, his study of translation, has itself been translated into Korean, Spanish, German, and French. He teaches French and comparative literature at Princeton University and holds the rank of Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

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