Les Misérables

One of those very few novels that manages to actualize a vision so tremendous in scope and complexity. At once an examination of the nature and mechanisms of suffering; a portrait of humanity's major psychological archetypes; occasionally a 25-page eminently verbose political history of the Parisian sewer system; and always a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Jean Valjean is you and me and everyone who has ever lived, everyone who thinks and feels and loves and tries to make something of themselves in the world they wake up in. We encounter so much meaning in our lives and have so little time with which to contemplate it.

an achievement of world literature that places Hugo squarely alongside the likes of Shakespeare/Cervantes/Tolstoy and probably my top 3 favorites ever. kind of evil that the musical has eclipsed the book in cultural ubiquity but also not because it's so important that it at least be Somewhere even if that Somewhere must include anne hathaway