Celina

In the late 1850s, Celina, aged fifteen, born into poverty, takes up work as a chambermaid for the Victor Hugo family living in exile in Guernsey. There she encounters the delicate balance between the professional and the personal, and the obligations placed upon her as her livelihood is at stake.

Inspired by Hugo's cryptic diary notes and by letters from his wife, Catherine Axelrad restores to life the girl whose untimely death shook the Hugo family, capturing the changing time in which she lived as well as life in the Channel Islands. In doing so, Axelrad sheds light on the complexity of Hugo's private persona and cuts le grand homme down to size. Intimately involved with him, Celina remains at the margins of the poet's creative life; she recounts her relationship both with the artist who is writing his Miserables by day and with the man who joins her at night.

First published by Editions Gallimard in 1997, this novella offers a singular perspective on matters of sexual consent and class dynamics: one which makes us take stock of social progress, but also wonder how far we have really come today.