Episode 2

While narrating Victor Hugo's fall from grace in France, David Bellos begins to decode his epic, exploring the meaning of colours and money in the context of Hugo's time.

There has never been a book like it. War and Peace, Great Expectations, Crime and Punishment were all published in the same decade, yet only Les Misérables can stand as the novel of the nineteenth century. How did Victor Hugo's epic work come to be the most widely read and frequently adapted story of all time? And why is its message just as important for our century as it was for his own?

Author David Bellos tells the compelling story of The Novel of the Century.

Reader: Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.