Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time and remains one of the best-known English authors. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen. A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. In the second book of A Tale of Two Cities, set in 1780, French émigré Charles Darnay is on trial for treason against the British Crown. The key witnesses against him are two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, who claim that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Barsad states that he would recognise Darnay anywhere. But eventually, Barsad has to admit that indeed the two men look almost identical. With Barsad's eyewitness testimony now discredited, Darnay is acquitted. Meanwhile, the hated and abusive Marquis St. Evrémonde orders his carriage driven recklessly fast through the crowded streets, hitting and killing the child of Gaspard in Saint Antoine. English audiobook "A Tale of Two Cities” on our website to experience the second Dickens's novel about the French Doctor Manette.
