India, Feb. 16 -- In an increasingly grim and ghastly world of Jeffrey Epstein, impunity for rapists, and gender pushbacks, Gisele Pelicot is a beacon of hope.

She doesn't like that expression, she's said in interviews in the run up to the release of her book, Hymn to Life: Shame must change sides on February 17. She rejects the words 'hero' and 'icon'.

"I prefer the word 'symbol' because what I value now is having given a voice to women," she told British Vogue.

To Lulu Garcia-Navarro who interviewed her for the New York Times, Pelicot talks about the legions of women who would turn up at court in Avignon where her husband Dominique Pelicot faced trial for drugging and raping her and facilitating her rape by over 70 men, 51 of whom al...