Notre-Dame de Paris

"Notre-Dame de Paris is the tragic love story of the grotesquely ugly hunchback Quasimodo—a bellringer at Notre-Dame—and the wild and beautiful gypsy Esmerelda. They both die in the end. But what’s wonderful about the book is that good still triumphs over evil, at least for the reader. It shows the purity of love. It’s also a marvellous insight into late medieval Paris. Much of the book is about the streets of Paris, and the role of the Notre-Dame cathedral in the society round about. It has a particular resonance at the moment because Victor Hugo was very worried about the preservation of Notre-Dame; when he wrote the book, many parts of it were falling apart. So he wrote this book as a sort of plea for its preservation. I was there the night that it happened. It did make one weep. Of course, it is now being renovated in the original style, using all the original materials. There’s still immense interest in Notre-Dame, not only among Parisians. Of course. It’s one of the most famous books in French literature . Victor Hugo was a god of French letters. No French author has ever been more popular. When he died the entire population of Paris turned out to watch his funeral cortege pass by on its way to the Panthéon, where French immortals, those who have brought most honour to France, are buried. So yes, the novel had a huge impact on the international interest in Notre-Dame."