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more about our featured books: Great Expectations Classic Retelling |
Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities is set in eighteenth-century England, at the time of the French Revolution. As the novel opens in 1775, England and France are both in turmoil. Both countries are controlled by the rich upper class, while those with less means must struggle for food and survival. As the story moves along, one of the novel's main characters, Miss Lucie Manette, finds out that her father, Dr. Manette, whom she thought died in a French prison, is in fact alive. She goes to France to bring him home. He is a broken man, and, as the novel moves along, we find he has a story to tell. As the Manettes find out more about each other, and as Lucie falls in love with a young man who has a secret identity, much is happening back in France. The angry peasants, downtrodden by the aristocracy for so long, are looking for revenge and social change. Dickens weaves the two stories into one, and we find that the Manettes have a sad and potentially deadly connection to the struggles of the French peasantry. Ultimately, this becomes a tale of profound love and sacrifice. This retelling
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