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.