Rent The Toilers of the Sea

Synopsis

Historical novel fset just after the Napoleonnic Wars on the Channel Island of Guernsey. According to Wikipedia, 'the author uses the setting of a small island community to transmute seemingly mundane events into drama of the highest calibre.' According to the Preface: ''Religion, society, nature: these are the three struggles of man. These three conflicts are, at the same time, his three needs: it is necessary for him to believe, hence the temple; it is necessary for him to create, hence the city; it is necessary for him to live, hence the plow and the ship. But these three solutions contain three conflicts. The mysterious difficulty of life springs from all three. Man has to deal with obstacles under the form of superstition, under the form of prejudice, and under the form of the elements. A triple ananke1 weighs upon us: the ananke of dogmas, the ananke of laws, the ananke of things. In Notre-Dame de Paris the author has denounced the first; in Les Miserables he has pointed out the second; . ..

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