A visit to the extravagant house where Victor Hugo spent his exile in Guernsey between 1855 and 1870, the Hauteville House, entirely designed by the writer. This documentary also looks at a little-known aspect of Hugo: his talents as a decorator, architect and designer.

The prodigious genesis of a monument of world literature, too often reduced to its popular success, also recounts the tormented conversion of its author, Victor Hugo, to the ideal of social progress.