ABRIDGED EDITION
What if you actually made progress in German by reading a masterpiece — no dictionary, no effort, no giving up?
This book is a bilingual edition: it contains the abridged novel in German AND in English, together in the same volume. You read German; English is right there to help you.
Why a bilingual book? Unlike apps and textbooks, you learn with a real story that makes you want to turn the page. It is the most natural immersion method there is.
— THE METHOD —
Ordinary bilingual editions make you lose the thread: the German text on the left, the English text on the right, and your eyes darting back and forth hunting for the right line. The result: you give up in the first few pages.
Polyglot Publishing invented something else: synchronised line-by-line alternation. Every line in German is followed directly beneath by the same line in English — like subtitles, but on paper.
• Understand everything, instantly — the meaning of each word is checked at a glance, with no dictionary and no phone
• Improve without noticing — your brain links the two languages unconsciously, sentence after sentence, and German grammar sinks in naturally
• Learn German by finally reading what you love — a real novel, not textbook dialogue
Suitable for every level: the translation helps when you need it — and never gets in the way of your reading.
--> Browse the sample above to see the method in action.
— THE BOOK —
Freed after nineteen years in the galleys for a stolen loaf, Jean Valjean finds neither work nor shelter, until a bishop takes him in. A different man under a false name, he takes in Cosette, daughter of a working woman dead in destitution, and raises her in hiding.
Inspector Javert, who cannot conceive that a convict changes, pursues him across France to the barricades of 1832. The novel explores poverty, law, redemption and what society does with those it condemns. Hugo binds a few lives to the portrait of a century and to a plea of his own.
--> Browse the sample above to discover the opening of the story.