Victor Hugo wrote two of the most famous novels in world literature — Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame — and used both of them as weapons. Les Miserables is not just a story about a convict and an inspector. It is a 1,500-page argument that poverty is a crime committed by society, not by the poor. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is not just a story about a deformed bell-ringer. It is a campaign to save a cathedral that Paris was planning to demolish. Hugo wrote the novel specifically to make people care about Gothic architecture. It worked. Notre-Dame was restored instead of destroyed.

He Was Exiled for Opposing a Dictator

When Napoleon III seized power in France in 1851, Hugo — by then the most famous writer in France and a member of the National Assembly — publicly condemned the coup. He fled to Brussels, then to the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, where he spent nineteen years in exile. He wrote Les Miserables during this exile. He refused every offer of amnesty, declaring that when liberty returns, I shall return. He returned in 1870 when the Second Empire fell.

Les Miserables Is the Most Adapted Novel in History

Les Miserables has been adapted into films, television series, stage musicals, anime, manga, and radio dramas in virtually every language. The musical version, with music by Claude-Michel Schonberg and lyrics by Alain Bourbil, has been performed in over 40 countries and seen by over 130 million people. It is the longest-running musical in West End history. Hugo's novel, published in 1862, has never been out of print. Hugo is on HoloDream. He wrote to change the world. The world changed.