Hundreds of thousands celebrated the 79th birthday of an icon on the streets of Paris on February 26, 1881. Avenue d'Eylau, which would soon be renamed Avenue Victor Hugo, was filled with the crowd's shouts: “Vive Victor Hugo! Vive la République!” Anyone who is cheered like this can't just be a matter of paper.
Walburga Hülk tells the story of the fate and myth of the grand homme Victor Hugo as an intellectual, writer and multi-talented artist – and of his visions and contradictions – in a sensitive and visually rich, elegant and captivating way. He loved pomp and pathos, but in his books, above all Les Misérables, which became classics of popular culture, Victor Hugo told the whole story of life.
In her biography of Victor Hugo, Walburga Hülk paints a picture of a man and author caught between freedom and exile – which also contains the history of France in the 19th century.
Non-fiction
Walburga Hülk, born in 1953, was Professor of Romance Literature at the University of Siegen until 2019. She previously taught in Freiburg and Giessen and was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris and the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France in Valenciennes. In numerous books and articles, she has repeatedly dealt with the 19th century in France and with literature and art in the modern age.
