The Seine: The River That Made Paris
Afloat on a Stream of Facts
I was going to start this review of Elaine Sciolino’s new book, The Seine: The River That Made Paris, with a disclaimer, as I was involved with it in a very small way, but, as Sciolino does not acknowledge my … Read More
Le Nouvel Empire: L’Europe du Vingt et Unième Siècle
For a New Capitalism and a New European Union
French Minister of the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire, whose book Le Nouvel Empire: L’Europe du Vingt et Unième Siècle (The New Empire: 21st-Century Europe) came out in April, addressed the American Chamber of Commerce yesterday to present his vision … Read More
Réflexions sur la Question Antisémite
On Anti-Semitism in France: Inferiority Complex?
Delphine Horvilleur, one of only three women rabbis in France, goes back to the origins of anti-Semitism in her latest book, Réflexions sur la Question Antisémite (Reflections on the Question of Anti-Semitism) to show how racism and anti-Semitism differ from each … Read More
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