'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!'

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

Brilliantly plotted, the novel is rich in drama, romance, and heroics. With sales of about 200 million copies, A Tale of Two Cities is the biggest selling novel in history.