Célina

By the age of fifteen, Célina has lost her father to the sea, a brother to suicide, a sister to tuberculosis, her virginity to a wolfish man at the inn where she was waitressing, and the job at the inn when another servant informed on her. In the Channel Islands of the 1850s, Alderney is not yet the tourist paradise filled with luxury cars it is today. When the chance arises to leave and work in Hauteville House for the Victor Hugo household during their exile in Guernsey, it is Célina's first glimpse of a different kind of life. Axelrad sheds a new light on the complexity of Hugo’s persona, and on the sexual and class dynamics at play in the proprietary, yet strangely tender relationship between the maid and le grand homme.

In Philip Terry’s agile translation, which imaginatively draws on the School of New York Poets, Célina’s mischievous spirit is matched by her vivid language. A fictional recreation based on Hugo’s Guernsey Diaries and on letters from his wife, Célina is a miniature literary monument to a forgotten life cut short.