Victor Hugo took seventeen years to write this novel, interrupted by exile, and emerged with a book that contains everything: the battle of Waterloo, the Paris sewers, criminal underworlds, revolution, and the relentless pursuit of one escaped convict by one obsessive policeman. The digressions are famous (and often skipped), but they are part of Hugo's ambition to write a complete world. The characters have escaped into musical theatre, but the novel is darker and stranger than any adaptation can capture. It is not a perfect book. It is a book that tries to do everything.