the city-lit cafe

city-lit Paris - the contents

 

We’ve just done some calculations for city-lit Paris, published on 31 March, and have worked out that it includes:

·         105 passages

·         42 translated passages – a quarter of these translated by us

·         Over ten nationalities

·         Over a dozen different genres

·         Nearly two-thirds of the material written in the 21^st century

 

And in case we forget the contents are as follows:

 

Janelle McCulloch, La Vie Parisienne

Marie Darrieussecq, ‘I love Paris’

Michael Sadler, An Englishman in Paris

T.E.Carhart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank

Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

Edmund White, The Flâneur

Sarah Turnbull, Almost French: a new life in Paris

Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the metro

Guy de Maupassant, ‘The Nightmare’

Agnès Catherine Poirier, Touché

Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes, and Bedbugs

Alex Kapranos, Sound Bites

Gertrude Stein, Paris France

Edmond de Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journal

Janelle McCulloch, La Vie Parisienne

Colette Rossant, Return to Paris

Stephen Downes, Paris on a Plate

Stella Duffy, ‘Un bon repas doit commencer par la faim’

Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual

Agnès Catherine Poirier, Touché

Michael Booth, Sacré Cordon Bleu

Colette, Claudine in Paris

Hans Christian Andersen, Diary

Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

Jim Hankinson and Paul Bahn, The Bluffer’s Guide to Paris

Kate Muir, Left Bank

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Peter Abelard, Historia Calamitatum

Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch

Jennifer Cox, Around the World in 80 Dates

Colette, The Vagabond

Julian Barnes, Metroland

Walter Schwarz, The Perfect Occupation

AdamThorpe, ‘Debauchery’

Jean Rhys, Quartet

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

John Williams, ‘New Shoes’

Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs

Sparkle Hayter, ‘Deus ex Machina’

Julian Green, Paris

Shusha Guppy, A Girl in Paris

Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions

Michael Sadler, An Englishman in Paris

Jan Morris, Europe: an intimate journey

Joanne Harris, The Lollipop Shoes

T. E. Carhart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank

Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs

T. E. Carhart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant

Jean Cocteau, Les Enfants Terribles

Claude Izner, Murder on the Eiffel Tower

Cara Black, Murder on the Île Saint-Louis

Julian Green, Paris

Edmund White, The Flâneur

Hans Christian Andersen, Diary

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant

Catherine Sanderson, ‘My love affair with Belleville’

Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr McKenzie

Abdelkader Djemaї, Gare du Nord

Daniel Maximin, ‘To the Canal Saint-Martin’

Claude Izner, The Père-Lachaise Mystery

Edmund White, The Flâneur

Sarah Turnbull, Almost French

Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Faїza Guène, Just like tomorrow

Abdelkader Djemaї, Gare du Nord

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde

Heather Reyes, Zade

Paul Verlaine, Confessions of a Poet

Gérard de Cortanze, ‘The Montparnasse Georama’

William Wiser, The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s

Cara Black, Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Cara Black, Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Jacqueline Rose, Albertine

Hans Christian Andersen, The Fairy Tale of My Life

Julian Green, Paris

Andrew Hussey, Paris: The Secret History

Claude Izner, The Père-Lachaise Mystery

Jennifer Cox,  Around the World in 80 Dates

Jean Follain, ‘The Père-Lachaise Cemetery’

Andrew Hussey, Paris: The Secret History

Kate Muir, Left Bank

Colette, ‘Montmartre Cemetery’

Kate Mosse, Sepulchre

Colin Jones, PARIS: Biography of a City

Claude Izner, The Père-Lachaise Mystery

J.-K. Huysmans, Parisian Sketches

Edmond de Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journal

Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame of Paris

Geert Mak, In Europe: travels through the twentieth century

Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française

Ian Collins, ‘I love Paris in the springtime’

Mary Blume, A French Affair

Kate Mosse, Sepulchre

W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café

Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life

Richard Davenport-Hines, A Night at the Majestic

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shalom, Berlin

 

Visiting Berlin for the first time was like finally meeting a relative you’d heard stories about all your life ― a relative with something of a ‘reputation’. Despite finger-wagging warnings, you find yourself drawn to her complexities and contradictions and the fact that she wears her difficult past on her sleeve.

If historians and commentators are to be believed, Berlin is no more Germany than Paris is France or London is England. And there’s always been suspicion and resentment between the capital and the values and way of life of the rest of the country. Jealousy? … or simply a lack of comprehension?

 

Between the unification of Germany (the first unification, that is, in 1871) and the First World War, Berlin grew so rapidly that it was called ‘the German Chicago’ or ‘Chicago on the Spree’ (so I have learnt from my current bedtime reading, David Clay Large’s Berlin). And now, almost twenty years after the second unification (the twentieth anniversary of the Fall of the Wall is 9 November 2009), the city again has the feel of a place where a big event has triggered a wave of energy and creativity.

 

As we begin to put together city-lit BERLIN, we have been contacted by a whole host of people sending us suggestions for what we should or could include in it. The ‘edge’ and vibrancy of the city is clearly reflected in the contemporary writing scene.

 

You only have to visit the wonderful Marga Schoeller bookshop in the Charlottenberg district or attend a reading at one the thriving venues in the old East Berlin to get a sense of the creative energy of not only the Berliners themselves but also of those from all over the world who have chosen to make their home there, either for a time or permanently.

 

But Berlin is also a city with the weight of its past to carry into the future, and this is something we shall have to take account of in city-lit BERLIN. But walking out on the first day of our recent visit, we were overtaken by three men, one of whom spotted a friend on the opposite side of the street.  ‘Shalom,’ he called out, at the top of his voice. ‘Shalom,’ his friend replied.