Everyone knows that Victor Hugo was one of the greatest writers of all time. But what is known about the man, the husband, the lover? And, above all, about the child, torn between his military father and his Vendée-born mother, both vying for custody of their three children? French writer and historian Max Gallo, author of the Patriots series and the famous biographies of Napoleon and de Gaulle, illuminates the life of one of the great geniuses of literature through a fabulous historical novel. *Victor Hugo: I Am a Force That Advances!*, the first part of the monumental two-volume biography of Victor Hugo, traces the paths the writer traced during the first half of his life, from 1802 to 1843. At 12, Victor Hugo wrote his first poems; at 14, he wanted to "be Chateaubriand or nothing"; at 18, the French Academy was already celebrating him prematurely. And even at an early age, his political impulses presaged his future! Because he would be present in every battle, denouncing the misery of the people, fighting against the death penalty and injustice, visiting prisons and galleys, protesting against child labor, and organizing a lottery with Lamartine, Dumas, and Balzac to create daycare centers... Writer Max Gallo is the heir to a literary genre that consists of fictionalizing history based on rigorously scientific hypotheses: the historical novel. He did this with great personalities, and now, according to critics, he has created his masterpiece by narrating the real trajectory of Victor Hugo (without falling into the distortions of an existence known to be resounding). Yves Violler, in the magazine La Vie, stated that, through reading Gallo's text, "Victor Hugo is placed strangely close to us. His genius becomes familiar." The story will be concluded in the second volume of the work, This One Is Me!
