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BOOKS |
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An extraordinary number of books have been written about Paris and
all things Parisian. Publishers are detailed in the form of British
publisher/American publisher. Where books are published in one country
only, UK or US follows the publisher's name. The abbreviation "o/p"
means "out of print".
History
Richard Cobb , The French and their Revolution (John Murray, UK). A
selection of expert essays on the French Revolution, with a personal
touch.
Alfred Cobban , A History of Modern France (3 vols: 1715-99, 1799-1871
and 1871-1962; Penguin/Viking). Complete and very readable account of
the main political, social and economic strands in French - and
inevitably Parisian - history.
Norman Hampson , A Social History of the French Revolution (Routledge).
An analysis that concentrates on the personalities involved. Its
particular interest lies in the attention it gives to the sans-culottes
, the ordinary poor of Paris.
Christopher Hibbert , The French Revolution (Penguin, UK). Good, concise
popular history of the period and events. Days of the French Revolution
(Quill, US) is a compelling account of the details, complexities,
personalities, and events surrounding the French Revolution.
Alistair Horne , How Far from Austerlitz (Macmillan/Griffin). An
excellent, modern history of Napoleon, catching him at his zenith and
recounting his subsequent demise.
Colin Jones , The Cambridge Illustrated History of France (Cambridge
UP). A political and social history of France from prehistoric times to
the mid-1990s, concentrating on issues of regionalism, gender, race and
class. Good illustrations and a friendly, non-academic writing style.
Lissagaray , Paris Commune (o/p). A highly personal and partisan account
of the politics and fighting by a participant. Although Lissagaray
himself is reticent about it, history has it that the last solitary
Communard on the last barricade - in the rue Ramponneau in Belleville -
was in fact himself.
Karl Marx , Surveys from Exile (Penguin); On the Paris Commune (Pathfinder,
US). Surveys includes Marx's speeches and articles at the time of the
1848 Revolution and after, including an analysis, riddled with jokes, of
Napoleon IlI's rise to power. Paris Commune - more rousing prose - has a
history of the Commune by Engels.
Robert Rowell Palmer , Twelve Who Ruled (Princeton UP). Another account
of the French Revolution, so readable it is almost entertaining.
Angelo Quattrocchi , Beginning of the End: France, May 1968 (Verso Books).
First-hand account of the disobedience of students that sparked the
riots of factory workers and finally revolution, from the pen of an
Italian journalist stationed in Paris to cover the events as they
unfolded.
Paul Webster , Pétain's Crime: The Full Story of French Collaboration in
the Holocaust (Papermac/Ivan R. Dee). The fascinating and alarming story
of the Vichy regime's more than willing collaboration with the German
authorities' campaign to implement the "final solution" in occupied
France, and the bravery of those, especially the Communist resistance,
who attempted to prevent it. A mass of hitherto unpublished evidence.
Theodore Zeldin , A History of French Passions , 1848-1945 (2 paperback
vols; Oxford UP). French history tackled by theme, such as intellect and
taste - a good read.
Society, culture and politics
John Ardagh , France Today (Penguin). Comprehensive journalistic
overview, covering food, film, education and holidays as well as
politics and education. Good on detail about the urban suburbs and the
shift there from the centre of Paris.
Roland Barthes , Mythologies and Selected Writings (both Vintage/Noonday).
The first, though dated, is a classic: a brilliant description of how
the ideas, prejudices and contradictions of French thought and behaviour
manifest themselves, in food, wine, cars, travel guides and other
cultural offerings. Barthes' piece on the Eiffel Tower doesn't appear,
but it's included in the Selected Writings , published in the US by
Noonday as A Barthes Reader (ed Susan Sontag).
Simone de Beauvoir , The Second Sex (Vintage). One of the prime texts of
Western feminism, written in 1949, covering women's inferior status in
history, literature, mythology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and everyday
life.
Denis Belloc , Slow Death in Paris (Quartet, UK). A harrowing account of
a heroin addict in Paris. Not recommended holiday reading, but if you
want to know about the seamy underbelly of the city, this is the book.
James Campbell , Paris Interzone (Minerva, UK). The feuds, passions and
destructive lifestyles of the Left Bank writers of 1946-60 are evoked
here. The cast includes Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett,
Boris Vian, Alexander Trocchi, Eugene Ionesco, Sartre, de Beauvoir,
Nabokov and Allan Ginsberg.
Richard Cobb , Paris and Elsewhere (ed David Gilmour; John Murray, UK).
Selected writings by the acclaimed historian of the 1789 Revolution
reveal his unique encounter with the French.
Robert Cole , A Traveller's History of Paris (Windrush Press/Interlink).
This brief history of the city from the first Celtic settlement to today
is an ideal starting point for those wishing to delve into the
historical archives.
Christopher Flood and Laurence Bell (eds), Political Ideologies in
Contemporary France (Pinter/Cassell). Beginners' guide to the current
political trends in France.
Gisèle Halim , Milk for the Orange Tree (Quartet). Born in Tunisia,
daughter of an Orthodox Jewish family, Halim ran away to Paris to become
a lawyer defending women's rights, Algerian FLN fighters and all
unpopular causes. A gutsy autobiographical story.
Tahar Ben Jelloun , Racism Explained to my Daughter (New Press). An
honest and straightforward account of the racial tensions in France as
seen through the eyes of its Moroccan-born author. An international
best-seller.
Peter Lennon , Foreign Correspondents: Paris in the Sixties (Picador/McClelland
& Stewart). Irish journalist Peter Lennon went to Paris in the early
1960s unable to speak a word of French. He became a close friend of
Samuel Beckett and was a witness to the May 1968 events.
François Maspero , Roissy Express (Blackwell/W. W. Norton & Co.) with
photographs by Anaïk Frantz. A "travel book" along the RER line B from
Roissy to St-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse (excluding the Paris stops). Brilliant
insights into the life of the Paris suburbs, and fascinating digressions
into French history and politics.
Andrea Kupfer Schneider , Creating the Musée d'Orsay: The Politics of
Culture in France (Pennsylvania State UP). Interesting and sometimes
amusing account of the struggles involved in transforming the Gare
d'Orsay into one of Paris's most visited museums. An original insight,
revealing French attitudes towards such grand cultural projects.
Tyler Stovall , Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Marnier/Houghton
Mifflin). A well-researched and vivid account of the flight of African-American
artists in the 1920s from a segregated and racist America to a welcoming
Paris.
Tad Szulc , Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer
(Da Capo). While musicologists may be disappointed by the lack of
discussion of the works that made Chopin famous, others will revel in
this exploration of his relationship with his friends - Balzac, Hugo,
Liszt among them - and his lover, George Sand and their shared life in
Paris.
William Wiser , The Great Good Place (o/p). An account of American expat
women in Paris, from the Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, through to
writer Edith Wharton, publisher Caresse Crosby, the sad socialite
novelist's wife Zelda Fitzgerald and finally the singer Josephine Baker.
Theodore Zeldin , The French (Harvill). A coffee-table book without the
pictures, based on the author's conversations with a wide range of
people, about money, sex, phobias, parents and everything else.
Art, architecture and photography
Brassaï , Le Paris Secret des Années 30 (Gallimard, France).
Extraordinary photos of the capital's nightlife in the 1930s - brothels,
music halls, street cleaners, transvestites and the underworld - each
one a work of art and a familiar world (now long since gone) to Brassaï
and his mate, Henry Miller, who accompanied him on his nocturnal
expeditions. This friendship with Miller is captured in his book Henry
Miller: the Paris Years (Arcade; Timothy Bent, translator).
Robert Doisneau , Three Seconds of Eternity (Neues Publishing Co.). The
famous Kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville takes the front cover, but
there's more to Doisneau than this. A collection chosen by himself of
photographs taken in France, but mainly Paris, in the 1940s and 50s.
Beautifully nostalgic.
Norma Evenson , Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978 (o/p). A large
illustrated volume which makes the development of urban planning and the
fabric of Paris an enthralling subject, mainly because the author's
concern is always with people, not panoramas.
John James , Chartres (D. S. Brewer, UK). The story of Chartres
cathedral, with insights into the medieval context, the character and
attitudes of the masons, the symbolism, and the advanced mathematics of
the building's geometry.
William Mahder (ed), Paris Arts: The '80s Renaissance (o/p), Paris
Creation: Une Renaissance (o/p). Illustrated, magazine-style survey of
French arts. The design and photos are reason enough in themselves to
look it up.
Willy Ronis , Belleville Ménilmontant (o/p). Misty black-and-white
photographs of people and streets in the two "villages" of eastern Paris
in the 1940s and 50s.
Judy Rudoe , Cartier: 1900-1939 (British Museum Press/Harry N. Abrams).
Marvellous photos of the world-renowned Paris-based jeweller's creations
including Art Deco necklaces, rings, bracelets and brooches, among other
objets d'art .
Vivian Russell , Monet's Garden (Frances Lincoln/Stewart, Talson & Chang).
An exceptional book illustrated with sumptuous colour photographs by the
author, old photographs of the artist and reproductions of his paintings.
Edward Lucie-Smith , Concise History of French Painting (o/p). If you're
after an art reference book, then this will do as well as any, though
there are of course dozens of other books available on particular French
artists and art movements.
Yves St-Laurent , Forty Years of Creation (Distributed Art Publishers).
Glossy pages of the best of Y-S-L's stylish fashion photography and
creations.
Anthony Sutcliffe , Paris - An Architectural History (Yale UP).
Excellent overview of Paris's changing cityscape, as dictated by
fashion, social structure and political power.
Cookery
Linda Dannenberg , Paris Bistro Cooking (C. N. Potter). Poule au Pot and
Rum Baba among other delicious French traditional dishes as cooked by
some of Paris's best bistros.
Alain Ducasse , Flavours of France (Artisan) and L'Atelier of Alain
Ducasse: The Artistry of a Master Chef and His Protégés (John Wiley &
Sons). The charismatic culinary entrepreneur offers a tour of the
gastronomy of France and some of the secrets of his successful kitchen,
combining breezy prose with inspirational photos.
Nicolle Meyer & Amanda Smith , Paris in a Basket: Markets: The Food and
The People (Konemann). Would be little more than a glossy coffee table
book if it didn't capture the sights, smells, anecdotes, and recipes of
Paris's open-air markets with so much aplomb.
Patricia Wells , Joël Robuchon - Cuisine Actuelle (Macmillan, UK).
Paris's most famous chef reveals some basic and some more advanced
recipes from his restaurant.
Paris in literature
British/American
Shari Benstock , Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (Univ of
Texas, US). Follows the lives and creativity of two dozen American,
British and French women who moved to Paris and dared to be different.
Charles Dickens , A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin). Paris and London
during the 1789 Revolution and before. The plot's pure Hollywood, but
the streets and at least some of the social backdrop are for real.
Robert Ferguson , Henry Miller (o/p). Very readable biography of the old
rogue and his rumbustious doings, including his long stint in Paris and
affair with Anaïs Nin.
Noel Riley Fitch , Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A history of
literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties (W. W. Norton). Founder of
the original Shakespeare & Co. bookstore and publisher of James Joyce's
Ulysses , Beach was the lightning rod of literary Paris. The work also
follows her relationship with her companion, Adrienne Monnier, the
documentation of which helps to place homosexuality in a larger
historical context.
Brion Gysin , The Last Museum (o/p). The setting is the Hôtel Bardo, the
Beat hotel: the co-residents are Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs.
Published posthumously, this is 1960s Paris in its most manic mode.
Ernest Hemingway , A Moveable Feast (Arrow/Touchstone). Hemingway's
American-in-Paris account of life in the 1930s with Ezra Pound, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, etc. Dull, pedestrian stuff, despite its
classic and best-seller status.
Jack Kerouac , Satori in Paris (Flamingo/Grove Press) & and in Brittany,
too. Uniquely inconsequential Kerouac experiences.
Ian Littlewood , Paris: A Literary Companion (o/p). A thorough account
of which literary figures went where, and what they had to say about it.
Herbert Lottman , Colette: A Life (Little, Brown & Co., UK). An
interesting if somewhat dry account of this enigmatic Parisian writer's
life.
Barry Miles , The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris,
1958-1963 (Grove Press). Follows the self-indulgent exploits of the
residents of The Beat Hotel at 9 rue Git-le-Coeur on the Left Bank.
Christopher Miller , Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone
African Literature and Culture (Chicago UP). An exploration of the
intermingling issues of nationalism, colonialism and post-colonialism in
Paris's ever-evolving literary landscape. Interesting topic, if somewhat
overly academic prose.
Henry Miller , Tropic of Cancer; Quiet Days in Clichy (both
Flamingo/Grove Press). Again 1930s Paris, though from a more focused
angle - sex, essentially. Erratic, wild, self-obsessed writing, but with
definite flights of genius.
Anaïs Nin , The Journals 1931-1974 (7 vols) (Peter Owen/Harcourt Brace).
A detailed literary narrative of French and US artists and
fiction-makers from the first half of this century - not least, Nin
herself - in Paris and elsewhere. The more famous Erotica was also
written in Paris, for a local connoisseur of pornography.
George Orwell , Down and Out in Paris and London (Penguin/Harcourt
Brace). Documentary account of breadline living in the 1930s - Orwell at
his best.
Paul Rambali , French Blues (o/p). Movies, sex, down-and-outs, politics,
fast food, bikers - a cynical, streetwise look at modern urban France.
Jean Rhys , Quartet (Penguin/Norton). A beautiful and evocative story of
a lonely young woman's existence on the fringes of 1920s Montparnasse
society.
French (in translation)
Paul Auster (ed), The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French
Poetry (Random House). Bilingual anthology containing the major French
poets of the twentieth century, most of whom were based in Paris.
Includes Apollinaire, Cendrars, Aragon, Éluard and Prévert.
Honoré de Balzac , Le Père Goriot (Oxford UP). Cornerstone of his
Comédie Humaine in which nineteenth-century Paris is the principal
character.
Baudelaire's Paris , translatedby Laurence Kitchen (Forest, UK). Gloom
and doom by Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, Verlaine and Jiménez - in
bilingual edition.
Calixthe Beyala , The Little Prince of Belleville , translated by
Marjolijn De Jager (Heinemann). The tale of seven-year old Loukoum and
his efforts to reconcile the hypocrisies and hard truths about his
family and his adopted city. The harsh realities facing Paris's African
immigrant communities are recounted with honest clarity.
André Breton , Nadja (Grove Press). A surrealist evocation of Paris.
Fun.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline , Death on Credit (o/p). A landmark in
twentieth-century French literature, along with his earlier Voyage to
the End of the Night , (Calder/Cambridge UP). Céline recounts the
delirium of the world as seen through the eyes of an adolescent in
working-class Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Blaise Cendrars , To the End of the World (Peter Owen/Dufour). An
outrageous bawdy tale of a randy septuagenarian Parisian actress, having
an affair with a deserter from the Foreign Legion.
Didier Daeninckx , Murder in Memoriam (Serpent's Tail). A thriller
involving two murders: one of a Frenchman during the massacre of the
Algerians in Paris in 1961, the other of his son twenty years later. The
investigation by an honest detective lays bare dirty tricks, corruption,
racism and the cover-up of the massacre.
Alexandre Dumas , The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin). One hell of a
good yarn, with Paris and Marseilles locations.
Gustave Flaubert , Sentimental Education (Oxford UP). A lively, detailed
1869 reconstruction of the life, manners, characters and politics of
Parisians in the 1840s, including the 1848 Revolution.
Victor Hugo , Les Misérables (Penguin). A racy, eminently readable novel
by the French equivalent of Dickens, about the Parisian poor and low
life in the first half of the nineteenth century. Book Four contains an
account of the barricade fighting during the 1832 insurrection.
François Maspero , Le Sourire du Chat (translated as "Cat's Grin";
Penguin/New Amsterdam Books). Semi-autobiographical novel of the young
teenager Luc in Paris during World War II, with his adored elder brother
in the Resistance, his parents taken to concentration camps as Paris is
liberated, and everyone else busily collaborating. An intensely moving
and revealing account of the war period.
Guy de Maupassant , Bel-Ami (Penguin/Viking). Maupassant's
chef-d'oecuvre reveals the double standards of Paris during the Belle
Époque with a keen observer's eye.
Daniel Pennac , The Scapegoat and The Fairy Gunmother (both Harvill).
Finally, two of the series of four have been translated into English.
Pennac has long been Paris's favourite contemporary writer, with his
hilarious crime stories set among the chaos and colour of multi-ethnic
Belleville.
Georges Pérec , Life: A User's Manual (Harvill/David R. Godine). An
extraordinary literary jigsaw puzzle of life, past and present, human,
animal and mineral, extracted from the residents of an imaginary
apartment block in the 17e arrondissement of Paris.
Édith Piaf , My Life (Penguin, UK). Piaf's dramatic story told pretty
much in her own words.
Marcel Proust , Remembrance of Things Past (Penguin). Written in and of
Paris: absurdly long but bizarrely addictive.
Jean-Paul Sartre , Roads to Freedom Trilogy (Vintage). Metaphysics and
gloom, despite the title.
Georges Simenon , Maigret at the Crossroads (Penguin/Harcourt Brace), or
any other of the Maigret novels. Literary crime thrillers; the
Montmartre and seedy criminal locations are unbeatable.
Michel Tournier , The Golden Droplet (Harper Collins, UK). A magical
tale of a Saharan boycoming to Paris, where strange adventures, against
the backdrop of immigrant life in the slums, overtake him because he
never drops his desert oasis view of the world.
Émile Zola , Nana (Penguin/Viking). The rise and fall of a courtesan in
the decadent times of the Second Empire. Not bad on sex, but confused on
sexual politics. A great story nevertheless, which brings
mid-nineteenth-century Paris alive, direct, to present-day senses. Paris
is also the setting for Zola's L'Assommoir , L'Argent and Thérèse Raquin
.
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