The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Written by Victor Hugo

Narrated by PJ Roscoe

“Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.”

In the teeming city of medieval Paris lives Quasimodo, a man born with a hunchback who lives in the Notre Dame Cathedral as a bellringer. He is treated despicably by everyone around him, save for Esmeralda, a beautiful woman who has attracted the eyes of many in Paris. His love for Esmeralda will drive him to do daring feats of bravery to keep her safe from the world and those who would harm her, even if it leads to his own undoing.

The story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is complex and beautiful, with a great emphasis on exposing the power struggles that were prevalent in this era of France between the impoverished and the religious elite. It also deals with the inhumane treatments of various ethnicities represented in the pages and the injustices of the legal system of the day. Perhaps most of all, the book is a love letter from Victor Hugo to the Gothic architecture of the time, with extensive descriptions of the artistry and beauty found in the stone walls of the cathedrals of Paris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spotify Audiobooks
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662258558

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.