Victor Hugo published Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831, when he was twenty-nine. The English title — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame — is misleading: the book is not really about Quasimodo. It is about the cathedral itself, in fifteenth-century Paris, and about the city around it on a single feast day in 1482, and about what gothic architecture can mean.
On the morning of 6 January 1482 — the Feast of Fools — all of Paris crowds into the great hall of the Palace of Justice. The deformed bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo, is crowned king of the festival for being the ugliest face in the city. In the square outside, an Egyptian girl named La Esmeralda dances with a small white goat. From a window high in the cathedral, the archdeacon Claude Frollo watches her with terrifying intensity. By the end of the day, Frollo will have ordered her abducted, fallen helplessly into a love he cannot acknowledge, and set in motion the events that will end with her hanging in the same square. The novel ends with two skeletons — one a young woman in white linen, one a deformed man with a hunched spine — found embraced in the great mass grave of Montfaucon.
The B2 adaptation collects the central twenty chapters of the original — the Feast of Fools, the dance, the abduction, the pillory, Frollo's cell, the murder of Phoebus, the trial, the sanctuary, the Truands' assault, the recluse and the daughter, the hanging, and Frollo's fall from the gallery. Hugo's romantic prose is kept, lightly compressed.
Hugo writes in long sentences with subordinate clauses and cathedral-sized paragraphs. The B2 adaptation keeps the structure of his sentences while occasionally relocating clauses to make them less labyrinthine. The vocabulary is anchored in fifteenth-century Paris (cathédrale, pilori, sanctuaire, gibet) and in the cathedral itself. B2 is the level at which a reader can begin to follow Hugo's voice as a voice rather than as an obstacle course.
Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.
Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was originally written in French, but you choose your reading language when you start.
B2. Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.
About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.
No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.
Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is rated B2, so we'd suggest starting with one of our A0 or A1 books first if you're brand-new to your target language. Check our shelf at /library/ — the readers there are short, gentle, and built specifically for week one.
Your first 30-day book is free. No card. No streak. Just a passage every morning.
Read it free for 7 days →A small group of readers working through classics in their target language — Kafka in German, Camus in French, Bovary in Spanish. Leave your email and we'll send your invitation.
Use this code in the app for 30% off your first year of Storica Pro.