Victor Hugo, who is famous for his novel the Hunchback of Notre Dame, also wrote a story called "Ninety-Three." It tells of a ship caught in a dangerous storm on the high seas. At the height of the storm, the frightened sailors heard a terrible crashing noise below the deck. They knew at once that this new noise came from a cannon, part of the ship's cargo, that had broken loose. It was moving back and forth with the swaying of the ship, crashing into the side of the ship with terrible impact. Knowing that it could cause the ship to sink, two brave sailors volunteered to make the dangerous attempt to retie the loose cannon. They knew the danger of a shipwreck from the cannon was greater than the fury of the storm.
That is like human life. Storms of life may blow about us, but it is not these exterior storms that pose the gravest danger. It is the terrible corruption that can exist within us which can overwhelm us. The furious storm outside may be overwhelming but what is going on inside can pose the greater threat to our lives. Our only hope lies in conquering that wild enemy.
Unfortunately storms that rage within us cannot be cured by ourselves. It takes the power of God's love, as revealed in Jesus Christ. He is our only hope of stilling the tempest that can harm our souls and cripple our lives.
from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A223048
While the modern English-speaking world is perhaps most aware of the first two through several movies and musicals based on the works, several critics[2] believe his final novel, Ninety-Three, to be his best.
During the years 1872 and 1873, Hugo wrote his final novel using a routine some might consider slightly eccentric. Every morning, on the roof of his house on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, Hugo would stand ... and pour a bucket of cold water over his head. He would then enter a glass cage he referred to as his 'lookout' and write while standing at a lectern.
The greatness of Ninety-Three perhaps lies in Hugo's family upbringing. His father was an important general in Napoleon's army in Spain. His mother was a member of a conspiracy to depose Napoleon. Hugo was able, through his upbringing, to write a novel on perhaps the most crucial event in French history at that time - the French Revolution - from as close to an unbiased point of view as possible. Different readers have come away from the novel identifying with and siding with different characters. Even one of the primary villains of the novel, Cimourdain, a nightmarish ex-priest, has had at least one defender.[3].
[2] Eg Robert Louis Stevenson and André Maurois.
[3] Admittedly, this defender was Dzhugashvili, who later changed his name to Stalin.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo
His last novel, Quatrevingt-treize (Ninety-Three), published in 1874, dealt with a subject that Hugo had previously avoided: the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution. Though Hugo’s popularity was on the decline at the time of its publication, many now consider Ninety-Three to be a powerful work on par with Hugo’s more well known novels.
