The Man Who Laughs: A Romance of English History
1869
On a frozen January night in 1690, a ten-year-old boy wanders barefoot through a blizzard, abandoned by the men who've kept him since infancy. He finds a dead woman clutching an infant to her breast, and that child, Dea, becomes his fate. Raised by Ursus, a philosopher-juggler, and Homo, his domesticated wolf, Gwynplaine carries a terrible secret: his face has been surgically carved into a permanent, horrifying laugh. This grotesque mask becomes his identity, and his curse. Hugo uses it to probe what society does to those it marks as different, set against the brutal inequalities of Restoration England. This is Hugo at his darkest: no redemption, no silver lining. A gothic tragedy about the monstrous and the marginalized, for readers who want Hugo without the hope.
