The novel that shocked Victorian England and has haunted readers ever since. Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse, the unwanted child of poverty and prejudice, and from his first cry for help, Dickens unflinchingly exposes a society that treats its weakest members as expendable. When the hungry nine-year-old famously asks for more gruel, he is punished for his audacity and launched into a nightmarish journey through the criminal underworld of London, where pickpockets wear the faces of children and redemption seems impossible. Yet against all odds, the boy retains his essential goodness, drawing unlikely allies into his orbit and unmasking the true criminals not among the pickpockets in Fagin's den, but in the respectable homes that refused to see him. This is Dickens at his most furious, his most tender, and his most unforgettable.
