I knew from reading a number of modern reviews that Notre-Dame de Paris is a tiresome read at times, but even I wasn’t ready for the ratio of story involving the characters – very small – vs. This is especially true when the author takes an entire section (literally) of the book just to describe the view from the cathedral rooftop. I tend to find classic novels a huge struggle to read. Approx 500 pages but differs between versions* Shaped by a profound sense of tragic irony, it is a work that gives full play to the author’s brilliant imagination and his remarkable powers of description. The setting of this extraordinary historical novel is medieval Paris: a city of vividly intermingled beauty and ugliness, surging with violent life under the two towers of its greatest structure and supreme symbol, the cathedral of Notre Dame.Īgainst this background, Victor Hugo unfolds the haunting drama of Quasimodo, the hunchback Esmeralda, the gypsy dancer and Claude Frollo, the priest tortured by the specter of his own damnation. It saves her, for she captures the heart of the hunchback.The complete and unabridged translation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Esméralda seeing his thirst, offers him water. Quasimodo is caught and whipped and ordered to be tied down in the heat. Frollo is torn between his lust and the rules of the church. Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer, is introduced by his crowning as Pope of Fools.Įsméralda, a beautiful 16-year-old gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men but especially Quasimodo’s adopted father, Claude Frollo. The story begins during the Renaissance in 1482, the day of the Festival of Fools in Paris. The book was written as a statement to preserve the Notre Dame cathedral and not to 'modernize' it, as Hugo was thoroughly against this. The book tells the story of a poor barefoot Gypsy girl (La Esmeralda) and a misshapen bell-ringer (Quasimodo) who was raised by the Archdeacon (Claude Frollo).

It is set in 1482 in Paris, in and around the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris) is an 1831 French novel written by Victor Hugo.

Hunchback de notre dame