Charles Dickens · 1859 · exile

Charles Dickens's 1859 novel of London and revolutionary Paris. A doctor is recalled to life from eighteen years in the Bastille, and his daughter's marriage ties her to a French aristocrat who has renounced everything but his name. When the Terror comes, the road runs back across the Channel to Saint Antoine, the tribunal, and a scaffold in the Place de la Revolution.

1. 1
   London

   At Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar, Jarvis Lorry receives the message that begins everything - Recalled to Life - and the Manette household is rebuilt in Soho around a man who spent eighteen years making shoes in a cell.

2. 2
   Dover

   The Dover road and the packet across the Channel carry Lorry and Lucie Manette back and forth between the two cities, as a bank clerk's errand turns into a lifelong entanglement with a family and a country coming apart.

3. 3
   Calais

   On the French shore the other country begins - the one of broken wine casks in the gutter, hungry villages and a marquis whose carriage runs down a child in the street without stopping, and where a knife is left in his bed.

4. 4
   Saint Antoine

   In the faubourg Saint Antoine, Madame Defarge keeps her register in knitting while the wine shop waits - and when the Bastille falls, Charles Darnay's name comes up out of the stones of the cell his father-in-law once occupied.

5. 5
   Place de la Revolution

   At the scaffold in the Place de la Revolution, with the tumbrils arriving and the knitting women counting, Sydney Carton makes the exchange that redeems a wasted life - a far, far better thing than he has ever done.