Notre Dame of Paris

In English speaking countries the book became known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a title that emphasized its most memorable character and helped propel the novel to international fame. The public's response was so impassioned that it sparked something remarkable: a newfound appreciation for Gothic architecture. Paris's actual Notre Dame Cathedral, long neglected after the French Revolution, suddenly became a symbol worth saving. Hugo's novel in practice shamed the city into restoring its medieval monuments, a fact often credited as the book's greatest real world influence. By the 1840s, a major renovation of Notre Dame was underway, driven in part by the public sentiment Hugo had stirred.

On one level, Notre Dame of Paris is a gripping romantic thriller: a pure hearted beauty caught between the adoration of a monster and the lust of a zealot, moving toward a fate as inexorable as a tolling bell. On another level, Hugo uses this story to study grand ideas. He contrasts medieval faith with the dawn of modern skepticism, the permanence of stone with the fragility of human lives. "This will kill that," he famously writes, suggesting that the printed book (knowledge, progress) will doom the old cathedral (superstition, the past).