Notre-dame De Paris (dodo Press)

Three extraordinary characters caught in a web of fatal obsession are at the center of Hugo's novel. The grotesque hunchback Quasimodo, bell-ringer of Notre - Dame, owes his life to the austere archdeacon, Claude Frollo, who in turn is bound by a hopeless passion to the gypsy dancer Esmeralda. She, meanwhile, is bewitched by a handsome, empty-headed officer, but by an unthinking act of kindness wins Quasimodo's selfless devotion.

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests primarily on his poetic and dramatic output and only secondarily on his novels. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Lgende des Sicles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the Englishspeaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misrables and Notre-Dame de Paris (translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1899). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthon. Amongst his other works are: Napoleon the Little (1852), The Man Who Laughs (1869), The History of a Crime (1877), Poems (1888) and The Memoirs of Victor Hugo.