Horror · Science fiction
Frankenstein
A young scientist gives life to a creature, then abandons it, and the creature does not forget.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Three storytellers
The novel opens with letters from Robert Walton, an explorer whose ship is trapped in Arctic ice. His crew pulls aboard a dying stranger, Victor Frankenstein, who tells Walton his story: a happy childhood in Geneva, university at Ingolstadt and an obsession with discovering the secret of life. Victor succeeds, is horrified by what he has made, and runs. At the center of the book, the creature tells his own story. Mary Shelley began the novel at eighteen, during a ghost-story contest with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley beside Lake Geneva, and published it in 1818.
Why it works for learners
Language learners have a special reason to read Frankenstein. Hiding in a shed against a cottage wall, the creature learns to speak and read by watching a family teach French to a young woman newly arrived from abroad. He learns faster than she does. It is one of the most moving accounts of learning a language in fiction, and you’ll recognize every stage: the first words, the frustration, the joy of understanding.
The book is built from nested narrators, each with a clear voice and motive, and its themes (responsibility, loneliness, revenge) are argued out in passionate speeches. The vocabulary of nature, from mountains and glaciers to storms, runs through it.
Which level to start at
B1 for the story, which survives retelling very well. B2 for the arguments between creator and creature, which are the core of the book. Mary Shelley’s style is formal and emotional, and C1 and C2 readers will enjoy it. Lexo’s narration gives Walton, Victor and the creature distinct voices, which keeps the nested stories clear.
Read next
- Dracula, the other great gothic novel of the nineteenth century
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, another scientist and his terrible experiment
- The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells’s darker variation on the theme