Set between London and a Paris collapsing into revolutionary terror, this is the story of Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat trying to outrun his family's name, and Sydney Carton, a wasted lawyer who looks enough like Darnay to matter more than either of them expects. As the guillotine starts working overtime, their lives collide in a way that turns a story about a revolution into one of the most famous acts of self-sacrifice in English fiction.Dickens's only true historical novel, and his tightest — a love triangle, a revenge plot, and a revolution all locked together, ending on one of the most quoted final lines ever written.