Hauteville house

This sumptuously illustrated guide - teeming with historical and artistic references - retraces Victor's years of exile in the Channel Islands, first on Jersey from 1853 to 1855, where he pursued his combat for the great humanitarian causes and took up photography, then on Guernsey, where he bought a house for the first time. It was at Hauteville House, an imposing white building with a garden looking out over the ocean, that he produced some of his most famous works and finest drawings, and where he also gave free rein to his little-known talents as an interior designer. Page by page, from room to room, we discover the luxuriant décor with which Victor Hugo recreated his universe in exile. Period and contemporary photographs show how little it has changed and illustrate how these sombre, luminous, mysterious and ostentatious interiors continue to reveal Victor Hugo's genius today.