Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-50
Intellectual Paris during the Occupation and Beyond
Agnès Poirier’s scintillating new book, Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-50, focuses on an extraordinary decade in Paris’s cultural and intellectual history. Poirier, who will be familiar to readers who follow her regular articles for the … Read More
The Alps
A Vertiginous Joyride from the Safety of Home
Full disclosure: Stephen O’Shea, author of the recently published The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond, is a friend of mine. That has nothing to do with the mention of my first name in the subtitle*, … Read More
Who You Think I Am
Who’s Who? Who Knows...
The first long section of Camille Laurens’ novel Celle que Vous Croyez, translated into English as Who You Think I Am (Other Press), draws you deeply into the story as the narrator, Claire, a divorced single mother, relates a twisted … Read More
The Paris Metro 40th Anniversary Issue
Paris Lost, Paris Regained
It only lasted a couple of years, but the fortnightly newspaper The Paris Metro (1976-78) left its mark on Paris’s expatriate community and spawned many talented writers, editors, photographers and graphic artists who went on to leave their own mark … Read More
Babylone
Extraordinary Ordinary Lives
Yasmina Reza is best known as a playwright, with worldwide successes such as Art (1994), currently enjoying a second run on the West End London stage (a rare distinction for a living French writer), and God of Carnage (2006), which was staged both in London and on Broadway, and was made into the film Carnage by Roman Polanski in 2011. In France, however, Reza also maintains a distinguished reputation as a novelist. Her latest offering, her eighth novel, Babylone, recently won the coveted Renaudot literary prize.
The Only Street in Paris
From Jesuits to DVDs: The Life of a Parisian Street
When I saw that a book devoted to one of my favorite streets in Paris, the Rue des Martyrs, had recently been published, I leapt at the chance to read it. To be honest, the apartment that has been my … Read More
The Cost of Courage
Fighting the War From the Inside
One aspect of the popular international sport of France-bashing involves attacks on the country’s collaborationist record during World War II, so it is refreshing to be reminded occasionally that collaboration was not the whole story and that there were many … Read More
Who Knows Tomorrow
A Life Transformed
In December 2002, fashionista and design writer Lisa Lovatt-Smith threw over a high-flying career at Vogue magazine and devoted herself to saving abused children in African orphanages. She has now turned her sometimes life-threatening adventures into a dramatic and often … Read More
Pas Pleurer
Intimate Tales Illuminate Historical Conflict
The novel Pas Pleurer (Don’t Cry) by Lydie Salvayre was the narrow winner of France’s premier literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, at the end of 2014, beating the favorite, Kamel Daoud Meursault’s Contre-Enquête, by five votes to four in the fifth … Read More
Tita
Literary Adventures of a Seven-Year-Old
Marie Houzelle writes about a French childhood in English. Tita is the eponymous story of one hell of a smart, sensitive and highly literary seven-year-old girl. This first novel by Marie Houzelle, born and bred in France, has the originality … Read More