18 books like Les Misérables

What to read after Les Misérables — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell · 1949 · ★ 4.2 · 244p · ≈ 8h · Challenging Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair). It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and… Shares: Community pick

The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas · 1964 · ★ 4.5 · 242p · ≈ 8h · Moderate Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Shares: Community pick

The Conquest of Poverty Henry Hazlitt · 1972 · 240p · ≈ 8h · Moderate "A publication of the Principles of Freedom Committee." Includes bibliographical references. Shares: Poverty, History

Les belles images Simone de Beauvoir · 1966 · ★ 3.8 · 174p · ≈ 5h · Moderate "Non ; elle a crié tout haut. Pas Catherine. Je ne permettrai pas qu'on lui fasse ce qu'on m'a fait. Qu'a-t-on fait de moi ? Cette femme qui n'aime personne, insensible aux beautés du monde, incapable même de pleurer, cette femme que je vomis. Catherine : au contraire lui ouvrir les yeux tout de suite et peut-être un rayon de lumière filtrera jusqu'à elle, peut-être elle s'en sortira... De quoi ?… Shares: French fiction, Continental european fiction

Sous l'acacia d'Occident Christian Jacq · 1997 · ★ 4.0 · 356p · ≈ 11h · Moderate In the final novel in the bestselling series, Christian Jacq writes of the Hittite king who wants Ramses to marry his daughter, while revolt is brewing among the revenge-driven Libyans. Shares: French fiction, Literature and fiction, Historical Fiction, History

A Particular Eye for Villainy Ann Granger · 2012 · 373p · ≈ 12h · Moderate From "an accomplished veteran" of crime fiction, a Victorian murder mystery featuring a female sleuth and her detective husband (Kirkus Reviews).When Mr. Thomas Tapley is found bludgeoned to death in his sitting room, his neighbor, Inspector Benjamin Ross of Scotland Yard, is immediately summoned.Little is known about the elusive gentleman until Mr. Jonathan Tapley, QC, hears of the news, and the… Shares: Social conditions, History

Bel-Ami Guy de Maupassant · 1893 · ★ 3.9 · 417p · ≈ 13h · Challenging .I Quand la caissiere lui eut rendu la monnaie de sa piece de cent sous, Georges Duroy sortit du restaurant. Comme il portait beau, par nature et par pose d'ancien sous-officier, il cambra sa taille, frisa sa moustache d'un geste militaire et familier, et jeta sur les dineurs attardes un regard rapide et circulaire, un de ces regards de joli garcon qui s'etendent comme des coups d'epervier. Les… Shares: French fiction, Continental european fiction, Historical Fiction, Classic Literature

Vingt ans apres̀ Alexandre Dumas · 1800 · ★ 3.9 · 754p · ≈ 25h · Demanding Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, and in England, Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. The quartet of musketeers come out of retirement to cross swords with time,… Shares: French fiction, Continental european fiction, Historical Fiction, Adventure

Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse Jan Potocki · 1950 · ★ 4.1 · 292p · ≈ 9h · Moderate A set of tales within a tale of a wandering a French army officer's encounters of the supernatural as he travels after the siege of Saragossa. According to the preface by Roger Caillois, it was originally published in St. Petersburg around 1804 by the Polish writer Count Jan Potocki and part of the work was published in Paris in 1893. The French version was published in Polish in 1847 and several… Shares: French fiction, Social life and customs, Adventure

Notre Dame de Paris Victor Hugo · 1831 · ★ 4.0 · 409p · ≈ 13h · Challenging In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo. Shares: French fiction, Continental european fiction, History

Kristin Lavransdatter III Sigrid Undset · 1922 · ★ 4.0 · 394p · ≈ 13h · Challenging In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally's award-winning definitive… Shares: Continental european fiction, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction, Classic Literature

Simon the Coldheart (Beauvallet Dynasty #1) Georgette Heyer · 1925 · ★ 3.7 · 288p · ≈ 9h · Challenging Simon was born in 1386, the illegitimate son of Geoffrey of Malvallet. He and his half-brother became great friends of the Prince, fighting against France. Simon, valiant and strong, with a keen mind and fair visage, had defied his ignoble birth to become a page, then a squire, and at last a lord of the land. Friend of kings and princes, gentle and just with his people, and known for his silence… Shares: Literature and fiction, Historical Fiction, History

Novels (A Tale of Two Cities / Great Expectations) Charles Dickens · 1989 · 835p · ≈ 27h · Moderate Tale of Two Cities After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of the two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil… Shares: Ex-convicts, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction, History

Идиот Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 1874 · ★ 4.2 · 655p · ≈ 21h · Demanding Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Fyodor Dostoyevsky set out to portray "a truly beautiful soul" colliding with the brutal reality of contemporary society. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive Prince Myshkin—known as "the idiot"—pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his circle. But after becoming… Shares: Continental european fiction, Social conditions, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver · 2022 · ★ 4.5 · 560p · ≈ 18h · Moderate "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his… Shares: Poverty, Orphans

À rebours Joris-Karl Huysmans · 1884 · ★ 3.8 · 294p · ≈ 9h · Challenging À rebours (French pronunciation: [a ʁ(ə).buʁ]; translated Against Nature or Against the Grain) is an 1884 novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. The narrative centers on a single character: Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive, ailing aesthete. The last scion of an aristocratic family, Des Esseintes loathes nineteenth-century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal… Shares: French fiction, Continental european fiction, Classic Literature

The bravo James Fenimore Cooper · 1831 · ★ 4.0 · 218p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Originally published in 1831, this novel is set in Venice in the bygone days of the Doges. It was inspired by Cooper's travels in Italy. The author has intended to give his countrymen, writes Cooper in his preface, "a picture of the social system of the soi-disant republics of the other hemisphere." Cooper aims to show, William Cullen Bryant said, that all systems which reserve power for the… Shares: Social conditions, Historical Fiction

David Copperfield [adaptation] Malvina G. Vogel · 1979 · 239p · ≈ 7h · Moderate A simplified edition of the autobiographical novel whose hero, an orphan boy in nineteenth-century England, successfully overcomes an unhappy childhood. Shares: Social conditions, Orphans, Social life and customs, History

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