Wuthering Heights

Published in 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell, the book is set on the West Yorkshire moors and follows the Earnshaws, the Lintons and Heathcliff. Love, possession, revenge and reconciliation drive it, and its cruelty and challenge to Victorian morality, religion and class made it controversial. Blondel is fascinated by it. Apart from Proust, it is the only book he has ever re-read, and he gave the hero of his own young-adult novel the name Heathcliff.