The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a French Romantic/Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. The story is set in Paris, France in the Late Middle Ages, during the reign of Louis XI. It is there that the deformed Quasimodo has gone deaf ringing the bells of Notre Dame for his adoptive father Dom Claude Frollo. The severe priest, though he looks after the grotesque Quasimodo, ignores the public persecution that the man suffers whenever he leaves the Cathedral, and it is at just such a moment of vulnerability that the lovely young Gypsy Esmeralda shows Quasimodo an act of kindness that leads to his inner transformation. Though still hated by everyone, Quasimodo’s sleeping soul awakens and grows in an extraordinary conversion to the sublime, allowing him to care for and protect Esmeralda. A commanding and epic melodrama, Hugo’s novel explores social justice through the suffering of his characters, though with a compassion and melancholy that belies the author’s conviction in the impossibility of salvation in his contemporary world. —- ISBN: 9798744578565