A nameless prisoner awaiting the guillotine records the weeks between his sentence and his execution: the cell, the trial, the convict chain, his little daughter’s visit and the approach of the hour. The volume also includes Bug-Jargal, Hugo’s early romance of the slave rising in Saint-Domingue, whose racial attitudes are those of the 1820s.
Hugo’s powerful protest against capital punishment, still one of the great arguments against the death penalty. Download the free EPUB.