the city-lit cafe

From Istanbul to Paris, Autumn 1968 ... Oya Badar's Warm Ashes Remain

 

Orhan Pamuk (Nobel Prize), Elif Shafak (best-selling writer of The Bastard of Istanbul) … That’s as far as many English readers go in their knowledge of Turkish literature. A few might have heard of Yasha Kemal. It’s the equivalent of thinking that English literature consists of George Orwell, Jeanette Winterson and Julian Barnes.

Working on our Istanbul anthology is proving both a great pleasure and a truly enlightening experience. With the help of our Turkish contacts I am becoming aware of the vast, largely untapped wealth of contemporary Turkish writing. It’s true that a little more is beginning to trickle through to our bookshops, thanks to some excellent and hard-working translators – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s lovely 1949 novel, A Mind at Peace, is now available from Archipelago Books in a 2008 translation by Erdağ Göknar, and Mario Levi’s Istanbul was a Fairytale will, I believe, soon be available from Dalkey Archive Press ... just the very tip of an enormous iceberg. And I was delighted to see Maya Jaggi’s review of Oya Badar’s The Lost Word in the Guardian on 16^th December (read it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/16/lost-word-oya-baydar-review?commentpage=last#end-of-comments ). Oya Badar is certainly a writer to watch. I have been privileged to read part of her novel Warm Ashes Remain and to thus be reminded that Turkish writers don’t just write about Turkey! This novel, for example, contains some wonderful writing about Paris, especially in the protagonist’s evocation of the city in 1968. As a schoolgirl soixante-huitard myself, I particularly warmed to this section (see below).

     There are signs that Anglophone readers are finally waking up to how much they’re missing by not reading enough work in translation: the recent founding of publishing houses And Other Words and Pereine Press, both dedicated purely to work in translation, along with a number of other initiatives gaining in strength and national profile (such as the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize) are hopeful signs. But come on, readers, clamour for more! – and especially more from Turkey ...
 

From Warm Ashes Remain by Oya Badar

            Autumn in Paris: “Les Feuilles Mortes”, Yves Montand, Brassens, “The Last Time I Saw Paris”, Sartre, “Ne Me Quitter Pas”, “Bonjour Tristesse”, love without restraint, revolution which overflowed from hearts onto the streets, Lautrec posters with black cats, onion soup in Les Vieilles Halles, oysters and white wine, “Forbidden to Forbid” and “The Street Is Beautiful” posters, Marcuse, “One-Dimensional Man”, Marx, Althusser… The banks of the Seine, the boulevards, the parks where the yellow-red autumn leaves whirl around just like in the song. The huge city gives the impression of being one single dry leaf. The rain that pours down suddenly, the famous cafés on Boul-Mich’, on Saint-Germain where one runs to take refuge… When we had money, we usually went to Café de Flore; we used to wait for Sartre and he would come… September in Paris: Les Halles, with its heavy odor of the mixture of fish, oysters, onion soup, flowers, spices, sausages; the Flower Market and its chrysanthemums, dahlias, carnations, white mice, rabbits, birds; the Bateaux Mouches carrying tourists on the Seine; the bouquinistes on the left bank of the river, the clochards under the bridges, gradually becoming more rare and touristic.

                 ‘We used to rummage about, going through the books, papers, etchings and postcards in the stalls of the bouquinistes which lined the two banks of the river, looking as if they had come out of a Paris poster, and we would shout with joy when we found something we had been searching for. The restaurant of Madame Sophie, an Armenian who had migrated from Turkey, had only seven tables and was on a side street off  Saint-Germain. As she placed the food in front of us, she would say “Eat, eat, it’s bon, it’s bon” in Turkish, which she had almost forgotten throughout the years. Candles of different colors stuck in empty wine bottles, covering the bottles drop by drop as they melted… The smell of butter spread into warm, crisp baguettes in the mornings; the fresh croissants bought at the neighborhood bakery opposite our building… Everything that makes Paris what it is; everything that we love in spite of ourselves, and despite all the deterioration, the staleness, the commonness, all that still retains its magic, resists our pseudo-intellectual snubs…’

     She is crossing Saint-Michel on a rainy September day; she is wearing an old, light raincoat. Her hair, her face, her hands are getting wet. She is in no rush to take shelter at the students’ café where she usually meets her friends. She is not bothered by the rain; on the contrary, she wants the raindrops to seep under her skin, all the way to her heart, and to cool the revolt, the grief inside her. She will be leaving this city in a few days. Is it only leaving the city that hurts so much? ‘I was twenty-three, I was in love; I was hopeful about life, hopeless about my love and naturally I was sad.’

            Autumn in Paris: All these, our youth and much more.

Death of George Whitman, founder of Shakespeare & Co Paris bookshop

George Whitman obituary

Founder of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 December 2011 19.10 GMT

Article history

George Whitman in 1992. His venture - putting the shop space to any possible literary use - became a stage in every bookish traveller’s education. Photograph: Peter Turnley/Corbis

George Whitman, who has died aged 98, was the proprietor of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, probably the world's most famous bookshop. He took the name from an equally celebrated establishment, from which James Joyce's novel Ulysses had been published in 1922.

The original Shakespeare and Company, run by Sylvia Beach on Rue de l'Odéon, had closed during the second world war. Whitman opened his first shop in 1951 under a different title, renaming it Shakespeare and Company 13 years later, shortly after Beach's death. When his only daughter was born in 1981, he named her Sylvia Beach Whitman after his bookselling predecessor. By this time the venture was a celebrated centre of English literature beyond the English-speaking world.

Born in East Orange, New Jersey, Whitman moved as a child to Salem, Massachusetts. With his father, a prominent physicist, he spent a year in China as a boy and later travelled extensively in South and Central America, on one occasion becoming lost in a Mexican jungle and being cared for by its inhabitants. He attended several universities, including Boston, where he studied journalism, and the Sorbonne in Paris, where he took classes in French language.

Whitman first came to France as a medical warrant officer in the US army after the second world war. Wishing to dedicate his energies to literature, but realising that he did not have the writer's calling, he opened a makeshift library in 1948, operating out of a cheap hotel on Boulevard St Michel. The stock consisted mainly of English and French books picked up from students or discard shelves at the Sorbonne. Among the visitors to this early incarnation of what would develop into Shakespeare and Company was the American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He remembered "George seated in an armchair in the middle of his tiny room in this third-rate hotel. Books were piled from floor to ceiling on all four sides."

Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, 2008. Photograph: Alamy

In 1951, using money from an inheritance, Whitman bought an ancient building at 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, facing Notre Dame cathedral. What had once been an Arab grocery store now became Whitman's first bookshop, Le Mistral – he claimed it was named after his first love, but visitors might have assumed a connection with the French poet Frédéric Mistral – comprising a regular shop for those who could afford to buy books and a lending library for those who could not.

Sylvia Beach had operated a similar dual-purpose establishment, one of the advantages of which was to draw not only customers but a community of like-minded folk. Whitman's bookshop became a meeting place, a tearoom, a salon for soirees and poetry readings, a matchmaking centre, and – not the least of its functions – a stage in every bookish traveller's education.

His premises were larger than those of the original Shakespeare and Company, and he opened a reading room on the first floor, with a view of the cathedral. In fact, the entire shop became a reading room, and while Whitman mixed new and used books, the new stock quickly came to look well-used too. Everyone loved Shakespeare and Company, but not all publishers' reps loved its proprietor.

By the mid-1950s, a thriving Anglophone literary scene had developed in Paris. George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen and others ran the Paris Review. Its closest rival was Merlin, overseen by the Scottish novelist Alexander Trocchi, with help from the poet Christopher Logue and the future publisher at Grove Press, Richard Seaver. All mingled at Le Mistral. Richard Wright and James Baldwin read from their works in progress. Among many others who signed books or photographs were Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.

It was probably at Le Mistral that William Burroughs's Naked Lunch was first tasted in public. "No one was sure whether to laugh or to be sick," Whitman said later about the apocalyptic sexual feast which at that time – in 1958 – could not be published in Britain or America.

It was eventually taken on by the Olympia Press, which, like Whitman's bookshop, was a supporting pillar of the Left Bank English-language literary scene. Whitman was never a crusader against censorship, however, and refused to stock the majority of Olympia titles, fearing a visit from the French vice squad.

It was slightly more than 20 years after Beach had closed her doors, in fear of German retaliation following her slighting of an SS officer, that Le Mistral became the second Shakespeare and Company. In addition to its other facilities, there was soon to be a writer's room for literary lodgers on the third floor.

I stayed there in 1991, while researching a book about Anglophone literary life. At about 10 in the morning, when I was barely out of bed, Whitman would burst in and plonk down a mug of thick sweetened coffee and a plate of pancakes, urging me to get down to work.

I would be failing to give a full picture if I left out the bugs that shared the bed, but it was in a wonderful location, it was great fun, and it was free. In a typical gesture, Whitman told me to search through the 1950s periodicals piled on the stairs and to take anything of which there was more than one copy.

The distinctive yellow front, with its Shakespeare's head sign and books in barrows outside, was always a warming sight as you made your way along the Seine. And it will continue to be so. Sylvia Beach Whitman has given the place some repair and polish, without altering its character.

Ferlinghetti was so inspired by Whitman's example in the early 1950s that he opened his own shop in San Francisco, City Lights Books, run on similar lines. However, there is only one Shakespeare and Company. Rather, there have been two, each as life-enhancing as the other.

In 2006 Whitman was appointed Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contribution to the arts in France. He is survived by his daughter.

• George Whitman, bookseller, born 12 December 1913; died 14 December 2011

www.theguardian.co.uk

 

Reading the City: Paris - the best books and literary places to cafes, walks, events and courses

Classic books on Paris: Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast; Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past; Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the Metro; Colette, Claudine in Paris; Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions; Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant; Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame of Paris.

Recent recommended books: Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon; Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs; T.E.Carhart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank; Andrew Hussey, Paris: The Secret History; Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City; Richard Davenport-Hines, A Night at the Majestic.

Recent recommended translated books: Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi; Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog; Faïza Guène, Just Like Tomorrow; Daniel Pennac, Monsieur Malaussene; Helen Constantine (translator), Paris Tales and Paris Metro Tales.

Favourite literary landmarks:

• Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore, Boulevard St Germain (where tout literary Paris from Hemingway to Sartre has drunk its café noir)
•  Shakespeare and Company Bookshop (where the Lost Generation found itself although moved to current location in 1951)
• Maison Victor Hugo, 6 Place des Vosges
• Maison de Balzac, 47 Rue Raynouard 
• Theatre de la Huchette, rue de la Huchette (Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna non-stop since 1957)
• Père Lachaise Cemetery (where Oscar Wilde, Colette, Marcel Proust and Jim Morrison are buried)
• Montparnasse Cemetery (where you’ll find Samuel Becket, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Serge Gainsbourg).

Best English language bookshops:

Village Voice, 6 rue Princesse www.villagevoicebookshop.com  

Galignani, 224 rue de Rivoli www.galignani.com  

The Red Wheelbarrow, 22 rue St Paul www.theredwheelbarrow.com  Shakespeare & Co, 37 rue Boucherie www.shakespeareandcompany.com 

W H Smith, 248 rue de Rivoli www.whsmith.fr

Check these out for regular readings too.

Nicest literary cafes:

Tea and Tattered Pages, 24 rue Mayet www.teaandtatteredpages.com

 Manga Café, 11 rue des Carmes www.mangacafe.fr

L’Autre Café, 62 rue Jean Pierre Thimbaud www.lautrecafe.com

Les Deux Magots, Place St-Germain-dès-Pres www.lesdeuxmagots.fr

Café de Flore, Boulevard St Germain www.cafedeflore.fr

 Inspiring literary walks: www.paris-walks.com Hemingway’s Paris and St-Germain-dès-Pres

 Useful apps: Literary Paris www.gpsmycity.com

Most interesting blogs: http://www.maitresse.typepad.com Essays and observations on books, culture and life in the city

www.laurelzuckerman.com Paris writing news

 Live events and festivals:

• Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, non-stop events and a book festival in June www.shakespeareandcompany.com
• the recently launched Paris Book Festival includes English-speaking writers  www.paris.fr/culture
• Culture Rapide, 103 rue Julien Lacroix has a fortnightly English-language poetry slam www.culturerapide.com
• La Maison de la Poesie, 157 rue St Martin includes international as well as French poets www.maisondelapoesiparis.com
• The Paris Anglophone Book Club discusses French books in English www.meetup.com/anglophonebookclub;

For the latest information  http://parisreadingsmonthlylisting.blogspot.com

 Writing courses and workshops:

• Faber Academy Writing Courses with visiting writer tutors (held at Shakespeare and Company which also runs other workshops ) www.faber.co.uk
• Paris Writing Workshop a month-long summer course, with masterclasses and workshops run by the Paris American Academy www.pariswritingworkshop.com  
• Paris Writers Workshop www.pariswritersworkshop.org

  

Chocolat author Joanne Harris's Top Ten Guide to Books on Paris

 

 

A rather splendid selection of novels, history books and travel books on Paris - including, yes, city-lit Paris - are included in Joanne Harris's very comprehensive choice for Philip Blackwell's innovative Ultimate Library. We wish the hotels we stayed in had libraries based on book lists like this!

Check it out here:

Download Joanne Harris Our France Top Ten

www.ultimatelibrary.co.uk

'city-lit Paris is a wonderful idea. Snippets of stories and writing set in Paris' Good Reads

 

Rachel Hawes rated it

Shelves: 2009, travel, anthology

I seem to have been reading this forever.

I read the first two thirds of it on the Eurostar back from Paris (I think I finished "Needful Things" on the way there) in June. And then I put it in a pile of books and kind of forgot about it.

I picked it up again this weekend and polished it off. It is a wonderful idea. Snippets of stories and writing set in Paris. As many of you know, I'm not Paris's biggest fan but this still sums up Paris beautifully as only ...moreI seem to have been reading this forever.

I read the first two thirds of it on the Eurostar back from Paris (I think I finished "Needful Things" on the way there) in June. And then I put it in a pile of books and kind of forgot about it.

I picked it up again this weekend and polished it off. It is a wonderful idea. Snippets of stories and writing set in Paris. As many of you know, I'm not Paris's biggest fan but this still sums up Paris beautifully as only the great writers can. It has reminded me of many books I need to revisit or visit for the first time.

There is one on London as well in the same series which I have added to my ever expanding Amazon Wishlist

www.goodreads.com

 

The best book on London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin? Check out city-pick in Culture Critic.

Guest Guide to City Literature...

CultureCritic | 18.July.2011 | 14:08

This week's guide offers a flash tour of some of the best fiction written about a few of Europe's biggest cities, courtesy of the folks behind the fantastic City-Lit series...

Malcolm Burgess and Heather Reyes run Oxygen Books and are the publishers of the city-lit titles, a series of books offering selections of the finest writing on their favourite world cities; a sort of literary travel guide, if you will. Taking in Woolf's Westminster, Christopher Isherwood's sordid Berlin underworld and Joyce's Dublin odyssey, they talk us through the impetus behind the series and their favourite books from their first five titles.    

Words: Malcolm Burgess & Heather Reyes

We were on the slopes of the Acropolis in the blazing heat three years ago and desperate to read a selection of contemporary writing about Athens. We had the heavy and slightly out-of-date guide books but there was nothing in them, or, we discovered later, in Athens' bookshops. There wasn't anything in London bookshops either. And so Oxygen Books and our city-pick series began, finding some of the best writing on cities we love, from fiction and non-fiction to journalism and blogs. Current titles include Berlin, Paris, London, Venice, Amsterdam and Dublin with New York out on 20 October and Istanbul and St Petersburg appearing next year. 

LONDON

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

No matter how many times I read Mrs Dalloway, I enjoy it and find some new detail to wallow in. Finding oneself in London on a lovely summer's morning, the whole novel floods back and increases the pleasure of it all.

When we step out into the London streets on a brilliant June morning with Clarissa Dalloway, we begin a rich day (like Ulysses, the novel observes the classical 'unity of time' rule) that draws many aspects of the city and its people into the narrative. While it is a wonderful – and often very funny – celebration of the capital, Woolf doesn't ignore its darker side. Set in 1923, the aftermath of the First World War casts a shadow both in the character of the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith and in Mrs Dalloway's own state of health. The sound of Big Ben haunts the novel, suggesting human mortality but also a kind of joyous pride in London. The party at the novel's close feels like a celebration of city life and brings together the characters we have met or whose minds we have entered during the course of the day. Tragedy arrives in the midst of it all, but the overwhelming impression is of a deep appreciation of people in all their failings and complexities, and of the city itself, which is equally complex but elicits love too.

BERLIN  

Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939)

No matter how well you know the film Cabaret, going back to the book on which it was based is essential if you really want to get into those pre-Second World War years in Berlin. On the first page, Isherwood declares himself to be "a camera", and while this suggests a cool, objective take on events, one mustn't forget that a camera is selective and able to make us 'feel' through focusing on particular details. For me, it is this balance between the objective and subjective that makes the book work so well. Who can forget, once we have met her, the landlady of 'Herr Issyvoo', Fraulein Schroeder. While poking gentle fun, Isherwood treats her with an underlying generosity of spirit which he also applies to the "hopeless" Sally Bowles (not quite as striking and energetic as Liza Minelli in the film). Yes, there's plenty of good fiction set in Berlin, but I always go back to Isherwood when I want that satisfying blend of truth and pleasure.

AMSTERDAM  

H. M. van den Brink, On the Water translated by Paul Vincent (1998)

This is a short but truly memorable novel and reflects Amsterdam's deceptively quiet, considered nature, which conceals turbulence beneath. It is the story of two adolescent boys from very different backgrounds who find a deep friendship partly through their shared passion for being "on the water" during an ideal summer before the war. With the rise of fascism and the occupation, their world is destroyed and the more fortunate of the two boys, David, disappears. The focus on water helps one appreciate the various manifestations of this essential element of Amsterdam, but the historical setting reminds one of just what was lost to Europe as a whole through the spread of the Nazi regime. It's a quiet but powerful read that deserves to be better known – as do many Dutch writers of whom we remain shamefully ignorant.

DUBLIN  

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

No, I'm really not being pretentious when I say this is my favourite book on Dublin. I had made several (unsuccessful) attempts to get through it, but then came across the most marvellous Naxos recording (22 CDs), read by Jim Norton with Marcella Riordan as Molly Bloom, which simply made it work. And it really is one of the funniest, most touching, tragic, wide-ranging, thoroughly enjoyable books ever. But you have to hear it in an Irish voice. It deserves its reputation as one the great books of all time not only for its close observation of early 20th-century Dublin, but of human relationships of many kinds, and the great joys and sorrows that shape our lives. Yes, there's a brilliant (and often referred to) description of Leopold Bloom on the loo, but details often not mentioned include the fact that he and Molly lost their only child, little Rudi, as a baby. The subtle anti-semitism of Dublin society is also something Bloom has to deal with continually. And Joyce isn't just good on people: the description of the Bloom's cat is just brilliant.

PARIS 

Emile Zola, Ladies' Delight (1883)

Ladies' Delight (Au Bonheur des Dames), published in 1883, tells of the rise of Octave Mouret, and a new kind of Paris department store, based on the Left Bank's Le Bon Marche. But at its loudly throbbing heart – and this is the real story – is the rise of modern capitalism and consumerism on a scale never seen before. Although a man of the Left, Zola is able to give us the visceral feel of seemingly unlimited products and materials there for our delight, delectation and moral ruin, and our moral approbation if we can remember it.  Think Selfridges on a Saturday afternoon a week before Christmas and you'll get the picture.

Read more on the City-Lit series and order titles at www.oxygenbooks.co.uk.

Keep up to date on the latest City-Lit news, including upcoming titles here and by following the series on Twitter.

www.culturecritic.co.uk

 

What are the ten best books on Paris - read what 74 Guardian readers think!

• No "Down and Out in Paris and London"?
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• Leatherface

19 May 2011 2:27PM

spanielhead, you beat me to it!

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• Phlarge

19 May 2011 2:30PM

Wot, no Maigret?

Reading Simenon (translation I'm afraid) I can practically smell the pastis and cheap wine in the bars and feel the greasy wet cobbles under my feet.

Quick Janvier, my pipes!

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• mllelucy1986

19 May 2011 2:36PM

'The life before us' (la vie devant soi) Romain Gary. Describes the final days of an elderly Jewish woman in 1960s Belleville who takes care of the children of prostitutes. Told from the point of view of a 10 year old Momo, an arab, who is a delight, innocently peppering his prose with filthy language and a nonchalant approach to hardships and scandals that would shock most adults.

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• maroule71

19 May 2011 2:43PM

The Fairy Gunmother, from Pennac, for a more modern take on the 19th and 11th arrondissement (esp Belleville) with a look at the north africans/chinese character of the place now... very Parisian indeed, plus it's a really funny book...

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• annifrance

19 May 2011 2:46PM

Maigret yes, but another Georges Simenon that I read years ago is The Saint and very evocative of the arrondissement around Rue Moufftard. Also The Blessing by one of the Mitford sisters, I forget which, set in the 20s and the louche British aristocracy living in Paris - a real period piece.

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• Kertes

19 May 2011 3:01PM

Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual. In every which way.

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• Dexxxx

19 May 2011 3:04PM

Bel Ami - Maupassant

(soon to be ruined by Robert Pattinson & Uma Thurman in Hollywood adaptation)

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• stoddy

19 May 2011 3:08PM

Perfume - Patrick Suskind

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• allwrappedupinbooks

19 May 2011 3:13PM

How about Elaine Dundy's underrated comedic classic The Dud Avocado (1958)? Or James Baldwin's equally fantastic (though far less comedic) Giovanni's Room (1956)?

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• nattybumpo

19 May 2011 3:15PM

Foucaults Pendulum by Umbrto Eco captures the essence of Gothic Paris in a beautiful manner. A brilliant novel that to me sums up Paris at night. Not the food and booze but just walking those beautiful streets alone and taking in the architecture in it's glorious light and shadow.
I lived there 25 years ago and walked every street and passage. It's like breathing history. Almost a sense of living history! Living in Barcelona comes close but nothing tops Paris.
.... and there's no way you can leave George Orwell off the list, his account of the flip side gives us the definitive account of living without a safety net. The greatest Novelist of the 20th Century......
Brilliant article.

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• TheBigMan

19 May 2011 3:15PM

No Proust?

Quel dommage. (Quel coq pretentieux)

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• bigAlittlea

19 May 2011 3:16PM

Another vote for the Perec, plus his Oulipo colleague Raymond Queneau -- "Zazie dans le Metro" in particular.

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• TerminalDecline

19 May 2011 3:17PM

what, no Da vin....

sorry, can't do it - even in jest

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• frustratedartist

19 May 2011 3:28PM

I'd recommend Balzac's "Cousine Bette" or "Cousin Betty" as it's sometimes called. A great portrait of 1830s Paris society, from servants and down-at heel clerks, penniless artisans, distressed gentry, wealthy courtesans and nouveau-riche plutocrats. It has some superb descriptions of run-down working class slums near the Louvre that were demolished under Haussmann's redevelopment of the city. Also Balzac's "Lost Illusions"- split between Paris and Algouleme.

Anothe nice one by Zola is the prequel to "Bonheur Des Dames" - it's called "Pot-Bouille" often translated as "Pot-Luck"- about the inhabitants of a middle-class Parisian apartment block. Like "Bel-Ami" and "Lost Illusions" it describes the success of a young man who comes to Paris from the provinces.

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• LynW

19 May 2011 3:29PM

Difficult to pick only one Zola, and I do love Au Bonheur des Dames. But no Therese Raquin, with its brilliant description of the old house in the Pont Neuf?

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• zastev

19 May 2011 3:31PM

Le Journal du Dehors- Annie Ernaux,

A diray-like representation of Paris and the author's alientation from the city in the suburbs of the Ville Nouvelle.

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• LynW

19 May 2011 3:32PM

Also, how about The Chateau by William Maxwell? Only a bit of this is set in Paris, as the title implies, but it's a great book about the experience of being a tourist, of meeting people and apparently connecting with their 'real' lives, but actually only passing through them.

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• scubadoc

19 May 2011 3:32PM

Another lost Paris: the revolutionary Paris of "A Place of Greater Safety" by Hilary Mantel. I found it's sense of time and place more evocative than the London of her lauded "Wolf Hall".

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• lessthanzer0

19 May 2011 3:40PM

Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) by Hemingway, undeniable. I absolutely fell in love with Paris before I ever had the chance to visit, and felt as if I knew the place the second I arrived - despite this book being set in the Paris of 60 years before I was born.

A short book, practically a novella and I wouldn't dream of spoiling some of the best lines in 20th century fiction here, suffice to say: 'just read it'. All young people should read this book...the way this quote ends still kills me a dozen years later

'...we could have had such a damned good time together.....'

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• hrababble

19 May 2011 3:41PM

What about Miller's Tropic of Cancer?

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• sbuhler

19 May 2011 3:44PM

Another by Emile Zola is the superb *Le Ventre de Paris*, part of his Rougon-Macquart cycle and focused on Les Halles Centrales. There are two recent English translations, one by Zola scholar Brian Nelson for Oxford World Classics and the other by food writer (appropriately enough) and journalist Mark Kurlansky for Modern Library Classics.

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• HopefulJ

19 May 2011 3:45PM

A Tale of Two Cities? Or does that not count, as London is also involved?

'Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres of land--a whole province of France--all France itself--lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.'

Fabulous stuff.

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• jurat03

19 May 2011 3:48PM

Thank you for not including anything from Douglas Kennedy because those novels are just awful.

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• hardknocklife

19 May 2011 3:52PM

LynW beat me to it.

Thérèse Raquin is a favourite. This book has it all: social commentary, scandal, murder, guilt, suicide, broken dreams... Zola's description of the shop and flat in the Passage du Pont Neuf is brilliantly vivid and atmospheric. I have now picked up Zola's l'Assommoir which shares many of the above attributes but finding it dragging on a bit.

À rebours (Against the Grain or Against Nature) by Huysmans is another worthy contender.

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• k1gannon

19 May 2011 3:55PM

The Three Musketeers-Alexandre Dumas - lots of swash and plenty of buckle - oh la la!

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• vindice

19 May 2011 3:55PM

No Baudelaire?

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• PopeyePete

19 May 2011 4:13PM

The Fall of Paris by Alistair Horne - a vivid and gripping account of the siege and the Commune, 1870-71.

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• frustratedartist

19 May 2011 4:19PM

@ vindice I agree. Especially "the Swan" with those haunting lines about the demolition of old Paris:
"Old Paris is no more (the shape of a city
Changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart)."

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• SkyRaftWanderer

19 May 2011 4:25PM

Last Nights of Paris by Philippe Soupault.

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• nrv0us

19 May 2011 4:26PM

What, no Hemingway? How about a spot of 'A Moveable Feast'?

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• BigNewPrinz

19 May 2011 4:36PM

Alan Furst's 'The World at Night' deserves a mention. The backstreets of wartime Paris, the spy game, the Nazi occupation, and the aristos that kept on drinking and dancing like the war was on another planet.

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• Pecksie

19 May 2011 4:37PM

@HopefulJ

You beat me to it. 'A Tale of Two Cities' is the best fictional account I've read of the horror and anguish of living in revolutionary Paris.

I'd also recommend F. Villon's medieval poems, set in snow-bound, wolf-haunted Paris, for a different view of the city.

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• tooeyotoole

19 May 2011 4:46PM

A moveable feast by hemingway is not only a great look at Paris in the twenties, but an insight into the lives of some of the greatest writers of that generation, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and James Joyce.

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• tooeyotoole

19 May 2011 4:49PM

Jack Kerouac's Satori in Paris

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• posterchild

19 May 2011 5:14PM

"Paris Was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank" Andrea Weiss
"Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris" A.J. Liebling
"Paris France" Gertrude Stein
"Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties" Noel Riley Fitch

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• PhilipArcane

19 May 2011 5:14PM

Sartre's 'The Age of Reason' should certainly feature.

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• posterchild

19 May 2011 5:16PM

"Paris Was Yesterday, 1925-1939" Janet Flanner

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• elkiedee

19 May 2011 5:16PM

I thought The Sun Also Rises was set in Spain? I enjoyed A Moveable Feast recently but it's about Americans in Paris rather than Paris itself. I'll suggest L'Assommoir by Emile Zola, another of his Rougon-Macquart books.

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• Sussexperson

19 May 2011 5:16PM

Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale -- lovely stuff on the Siege of Paris.

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• YojimboMukairee

19 May 2011 5:38PM

I'd recommend Breton's Nadja. I don't think there's a more compelling celebration of the web of mystery and marvelous coincidences the city spins.

"Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all."

Nadja is Paris.

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• stultus

19 May 2011 5:50PM

Gide's Les Faux-Monnayeurs...

...and yes, the absence of Proust is bizarre,even if it were only those sections which did take place in Paris.

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• lara153

19 May 2011 6:19PM

Edmund White's The Flaneur

Classic account of Paris from that most Parisian of perspectives: the flaneur's

(Excuse the absence of the circumflex...)

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• jaws44

19 May 2011 6:45PM

Satre's Intimacy collection of love stories took me there before I finally got to Momartre in person where my first meeting was with a Piaf replicant. What is life without rain and a history of make-up?

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• rh1968

19 May 2011 6:57PM

Tropic of Cancer makes Paris romantic whilst being not at all romantic itself, if that makes any sense. Zola's Paris deserves inclusion for its name alone, but is also a wonderful novel - Flaubert's evocation of petit bourgeois Parisians in A Sentimental Education is also superb. And second the recommendations of The Sun Also Rises above, I often pick it up and just read the opening Paris section, especially before I travel there, it truly evokes the spirit of place. As indeed does one Hemingway short story: in The Snows of Kilimanjaro the dying writer looks back over his life and there are several passages of Parisian memories, beautifully evoked.

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• rougegorge

19 May 2011 7:02PM

Jacques Lanzmann's "Rue des Rosiers" is a little gem but if you want a taste of the stinky side of the city, try "Place Beauvau" by Olivia Recassens, Jean-Michel Decugis and Christophe Labbe.

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• Staggart

19 May 2011 7:18PM

Surely there must be a space for Geoff Dyer's "Paris Trance"? It's a guide to the 11th and a meditation on happiness to boot.

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• Cosmodemon

19 May 2011 7:34PM

Some wonderful suggestions already and Paris is my favourite 'literary' city too.

I would recommend 'Last Nights Of Paris' by Phillipe Soupault (There's a William Carlos Williams English translation knocking about).

'Life: A User's Manual' by Georges Perec (may have seen his name in this list already).

'Nausea' by John Paul Sartre.

and of course 'Tropic Of Cancer' and/or 'Quiet Days In Clichy' by Henry Miller.

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• UnashamedPedant

19 May 2011 7:39PM

TerminalDecline
19 May 2011 3:17PM
what, no Da vin....
sorry, can't do it - even in jest

That needs repeating. One of the most excrutiatingly bad books I have ever read. Not just bad, but pretending to be good so that the badness becomes especially embarassing. The goofs in narrative logic or would-be local colour (French and British) are legion.

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• CelineColette

19 May 2011 7:39PM

So many great suggestions here! My Left Bank fave has to be Djuna Barnes's NIghtwood - in the words of Jeanette Winterson, 'like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass'. And let's not forget that modern Paris extends beyond the twenty arrondissements - extra muros, Mehdi Charef's Tea in the Harem is a must-read. Bon appetit!

 

• CamdenKid

19 May 2011 7:40PM

The Fantômas books are great.

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• UnashamedPedant

19 May 2011 7:41PM

@frustratedartist

I'd recommend Balzac's "Cousine Bette"

I don't know as much Balzac as I would like to. For me particularly Le père Goriot epitomizes Paris at that period.

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• MurphyMoon

19 May 2011 7:44PM

Beckett 'The Unnamable'. A creature in jar and the horse abattoirs. That is Paris.

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• UnashamedPedant

19 May 2011 7:50PM

Burgess's list starts with Notre Dame de Paris, buzt it is surprising that no-one has het mentioned Les Misérables, in which Paris -- above and below ground -- is not just a setting but practically a super-character.
What about Henry James's The American?

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• UnashamedPedant

19 May 2011 7:51PM

Take two:
Burgess's list starts with Notre Dame de Paris, but it is surprising that no-one has yet mentioned Les Misérables, in which Paris -- above and below ground -- is not just a setting but practically a super-character.
What about Henry James's The American?

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• magicman

19 May 2011 7:57PM

Giovanni's Room ? James Baldwin's ex-pat coming out

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• CelineColette

19 May 2011 7:58PM

@UnashamedPedant

If you loved Père Goriot, you must read Flaubert's Sentimental Education.
No character epitomes the Bildungsroman quite like Frédéric Moreau. Also a classic Paris novel! Enjoy!

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• silverkey

19 May 2011 8:27PM

Geoff Dyer's wonderful 'Paris Trance' definitely deserves a mention.

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• Chourave

19 May 2011 8:49PM

Madeline.

Otherwise,a resounding YES for Aragon. And a Miller or two (Quiet Days in Clichy), perhaps with a little Nin spicing things up a bit. And Queneau's Zazie dans le metro, brilliant

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• dormirdebout

19 May 2011 9:25PM

Any Leo Mallet starring Nestor Burma. Mostly written and set in the 40's and 50's, each book is set in a different arrondissment - drole, atmospheric and interesting to see how some areas have changed.

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• CelineColette

19 May 2011 9:32PM

In honour of the beautiful summer weather, Adam Gopnik's collection of essays, 'Paris to the Moon', will surely bring a smile to your face. :)

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• rebert

19 May 2011 10:25PM

"The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," by Gertrude Stein.

"L'Envers du music hall," by Colette.

"A Narrow Street," by Eliot Paul

"Les Miserables," by Victor Hugo

"Giovanni's Room," by James Baldwin

"Tropic of Cancer," by Henry Miller

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• alipan

19 May 2011 10:32PM

'The diary of Anais nin' .

Read it and realise that you do not live in the best of era's and in the best of place , with the liveliest of peoples and their sense of essentialness .
Paris , toujour .

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• morninghollow

19 May 2011 11:18PM

Personally, I wouldn't have omitted Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys.

A.L. Kennedy's introduction to the Penguin Classics edition sums it up perfectly: "Anyone who has ever been lonely, uncertain, afraid, will find something of themselves here; something of the banal horror of a simply unhappy life."

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• LisaClare8

20 May 2011 12:08AM

What about Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant, set in Paris and one of the best books I have read in the last five years. A true Tour de Force - wonderfully evokes how the Parisians lived, worked, partied, loved, dined, romanced and fought. Such a truly perfect book. One of the best - I highly recommend it!

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• redqueen3

20 May 2011 12:32AM

May I add: "The Most Beautiful Walk in the World" by John Baxter, "Paris, Paris" by David Downie, "Quiet Corners of Paris" by Jean-Christophe Napias...

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• aratuk

20 May 2011 1:00AM

Down and Out in Paris & London (the first half, obviously), by Eric Arthur Orwell. It's such a vivid, often journalistic account of the seamy side of Paris, that it makes me very glad I wasn't eating in Parisian restaurants 90 years ago.

A couple of quotations I highlighted when I reread it on my Kindle:

The Paris slums are a gathering place for eccentric people—people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words.
There were the Rougiers, for instance, an old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extraordinary trade. They used to sell post cards on the Boulevard St. Michel. The curious thing was that the post cards were sold in sealed packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this until too late, and of course never complianed. The Rougiers earned about a hundred francs a week, and by strict economy managed to be always half starved and half drunk. The filth of their room was such that one could smell it on the floor below. According to Madame F.,neither of the Rougiers had taken off their clothes for four years.

Later in the book...

In the kitchen the dirt was worse. It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup—that is, if he is not going to drink it himself. He is an artist, but his art is not cleanliness To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment. When a steak, for instance, is brought up for the head cook's inspection, he does not handle it with a fork. He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and licks it to taste the gravy, runs it round and licks it again, then steps back and contemplates the piece of meat like an artist judging a picture, then presses it lovingly into place with his fat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning. When he is satisfied he takes a cloth and wipes his fingerprints from the dish, and hands it to the waiter. And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy—his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair. Whenever one pays more than, say, ten francs for a dish of meat in Paris, one may be certain that it has been fingered in this manner. In very cheap restaurants it is different; there, the same trouble is not taken over the food, and it is just forked out of the pan and flung on to a plate, without handling. Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it.

Ah, vivre un roman d'amour !

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• mslittleoldlady

20 May 2011 1:26AM

One of my favorites.....and I will read it over every few years....is Pere Goriot by Balzac. It always gives me a true flavor of Paris....the beauty, the glitz, the dirty, dark underbelly.

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• zaziedanslemetro

20 May 2011 7:52AM

This is a wonderful book on so many levels
Zazie dans le Metro by Raymond Queneau 1959.
An irreverent,foul-mouthed young teenager,Zazie from the provinces is dumped by her mother on her Uncle Gabriel for the weekend in 1950's Paris.
A strong willed girl she has no interest in the sights of Paris.
On being asked if she would like to see Napoleon's tomb she replies
'Napoleon my ass.He doesn't interest me at all,that puffed up clot with his stupid hat"
'\What would you like to see?'asks her kind uncle
'Le metro"
The metro is on strike.All stations are closed.Zazie escapes ,Uncle searches,and what follows is a funny demented riotous journey through Paris...bistros,taxi drivers passers by...a picture of a city the author knew and loved so well
Queneau was a linguist and a humourist.
He sometimes writes french as used by foreigners trying to speak french...'bloudjinzzes"for blue jeans etc
The tour through central Paris with the Gabriel the Uncle pointing out the famous landmarks erroneously is funny and the book is full of characters/types which feel genunine

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• patzyk

20 May 2011 8:23AM

I found A Girl in Paris by Shusha Guppy in 1991 very evocative of Paris at the time.

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• gbsteve1

20 May 2011 10:49AM

That's not the same Shakespeare & Co as attended by the Moderns. That one was in Rue de l'Opera and was closed by the Nazis. The current one opened in 1951 and was originally called Le Mistral but honoured the first one with a name change in 1964. It's still worth a visit though.

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• globalgirl

20 May 2011 11:44AM

I'd recommend Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. A wonderful book that really captures wartime Paris.

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• darkmistress

20 May 2011 3:07PM

how could they forget hemingway's a moveable feast.

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agnesp

20 May 2011 3:10PM

No Proust? No Hemingway? No Italo Calvino? No Saul Bellow? No Balzac ? No Orwell? No Simone de Beauvoir? No James Baldwin? No Boris Vian ? No Maupassant?

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• Calvino9

20 May 2011 5:28PM

Wow, so many brilliant suggestions here. My only defence is that I was limited to ten books and they needed to be largely or in sizeable part set in a specific place in Paris. But just a wealth of recommendations for any Paris lover: can't wait to check out the Daniel Pennac and Jacques Lanzmann. Can't wait for the Maupassant Bel Ami film - is such a wonderful novel and I love that kind of realist but somehow also romantic writing about Paris. Fantastic to have so many Zola suggestions too - just a shame that not enough of his books are translated into English. Any publishers out there, please take note. Apparently Michael Rosen is writing a Zola biography which should be very interesting.

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• zaziedanslemetro

21 May 2011 7:50AM

Andrew Hussey's PARIS THE SECRET HISTORY is excellent.
Informative,entertaining,surprising and immaculately researched by a french speaking academic who went to Paris in the late 70's,fired up by the punk revolution and with a thirst for anarchy and adventure.His first taste of Paris was busking on the metro and he was hooked

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• zaziedanslemetro

21 May 2011 8:13AM

The Streets of Paris .Intro and text by Richard Cobb.Photographs by Nicholas Breach
(Pub 1980)
Wonderfully evocative and nostalgic.A little sad since all the places I have looked for have disappeared and been built over.This is unpretentious Paris,half-hidden,long yards "increasingly threatened",courtyards,washing lines shared,the children watched from a score of inward looking windows...places of human proportions.The boulevards and the main arteries are avoided in favour of side streets still paved and down which run streams of water followed by a municipal worker with a broom.Small trades are listed on busier streets.One- man enterprises...bookbinder.gold -leafer,wigs,vieux papiers,buttons,cutlery,locks,dressmakers,enamelers...in fact the world that we enter when we read Maigret
Cobb was Prof Modern History at Oxford and the one of the very best writers on France.He loved Maigret too and the commissaire's Paris which included les petits gens,the side streets,the workers,the dispossessed,the crooks,the bistro owners,musicians,prostitiutes and all those people who arrived in Paris from the provinces to find a better life

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• jeanmarcd

21 May 2011 8:45PM

Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue

Fantomas by Marcel Allain, Pierre Souvestre

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• zaziedanslemetro

22 May 2011 9:50AM

The Beat Hotel by Barry Miles

This was at 9 Rue Git-le Coeur,a class 13 hotel providing hot water 3 days a week, clean curtains and bedspreads every Spring and cheap rooms for poets,writers and photographers in the 60's, but especially for the Beats.
Ginsberg,Corso,Orlovsky,Burroughs all lived here.The Naked Lunch was completed here. Harold Chapman photographed them all.
Paris has always been a home for those on the run,outsiders,the misunderstood, escapers from sexual and cultural conservatism
Best of all my partner was a Scottish painter and decorator living in one of the rooms whose imitation of Madame Rachou the hoteliere calling up the stairs in her Marseillaise accent to Corso..."Your mother is on the phone" still makes me laugh

Agree or disagree? city-pick selects the 10 best books set in Paris in the Guardian

10 of the best books set in Paris

Malcolm Burgess, publisher of the City-Lit series, selects his favourite reads for the French capital


As featured in our Paris city guide

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Malcolm Burgess

The Guardian, Thursday 19 May 2011

Article history

Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), 1831

As a visitor it's almost impossible not to see the splendid Notre-Dame Cathedral through the eyes of Victor Hugo and his creation Quasimodo.

"When, after groping your way lengthily up the gloomy spiral staircase, which rises vertically up through the thick wall of the bell towers, you abruptly emerged at last on to one of the two lofty platforms, flooded with air and daylight, a beautiful panorama unfolded itself …"
• Ile de la Cité, 4th arrondissement

Graham Robb, Parisians, 2010

From 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians introduces us to the people and places of Paris. Here, he recounts an atmospheric cycle journey beside the canals of north-eastern Paris.

"With its jostling crowds and tatty shops, (La Chapelle) has more of the big city about it than the delicate stage sets of central Paris. Across the road from the church … there is a view of the Sacré-Coeur on its ant-hill of roofs and chimneys. Far below, trains rattle through the deep cutting towards the Gare du Nord."
• Impasse de Curé, 18th arrondissement

T E Carhart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, 2000

The sights, the smells, the atmosphere of a very special part of the city, evoked by T E Carhart, an American living in Paris, who discovers a piano repair shop on the Left Bank.

"Summer set in early and the sidewalks in the quartier came alive after hours. In a city where few apartments are air-conditioned, the terraces of cafés become the common refuge from a withering heat in the evening."
• rue St Jacques, 5th arrondissement, Latin Quarter

Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs, 2005

The world around the Left Bank's famous bookshop Shakespeare and Company - haunt of literary giants from Hemingway and Joyce to Ginsberg and Burroughs and still going strong.

"Shakespeare and Company sits on the very left edge of the Left Bank. The store is close enough to the Seine that when one is standing in the front doorway, a well-thrown apple core will easily reach river water."
• 37 rue Bûcherie, 5th arrondissement, opposite Notre-Dame

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, 2008

Life behind the façades of a grand Parisian apartment building in the very respectable 7th arrondissement, an insight into the secrets of the building's concierge and its residents.

"My name is Renée. I am fifty-four years old. For twenty-seven years I have been the concierge at number 7, rue de Grenelle, a fine hôtel particulier with a courtyard and private gardens, divided into eight luxury apartments …"
• rue de Grenelle, 7th arrondissement

Claude Izner, Murder on the Eiffel Tower, 2007

The brand-new Eiffel Tower – the glory of the 1889 Universal Exhibition – is at the centre of this dazzling murder mystery set in late 19th-century Paris.

"Pointing straight up into the sky on the other side of the Seine, Gustav Eiffel's bronze-coloured tower was reminiscent of a giant streetlamp topped with gold. Panic-stricken, Eugénie searched for a pretext to get out of climbing it."
• 7th arrondissement

Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes, 2010

The plush rue de Monceau is at the heart of de Waal's tour de force: once the home of his great grandfather Charles Ephrussi on whom Proust based his own Charles Swann.

"Rue de Monceau is a long Parisian street bisected by the grand boulevard Malesherbes that charges off towards the boulevard Pereire. It is a hill of golden-stone houses … Number 81 rue de Monceau, the Hôtel Ephrussi, where my netsuke start their journey, is near the top of the hill."
• 81 rue de Monceau near parc Monceau, 8th arrondissement

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, 1926

Paris Peasant is a surrealist masterpiece that uses every resource of language to evoke Paris and the extraordinary Buttes-Chaumont park in what was the working class east of the city.

"This great oasis in a popular district, a shady zone where the prevailing atmosphere is distinctly murderous, this crazy area born in the head of an architect from the conflict between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the economic conditions of existence in Paris."
• Buttes-Chaumont, 19th arrondissemen

Richard Davenport-Hines, A Night at the Majestic, 2006

All the luxury and glamour of Rive Droite Paris, just off the Champs Elysées, as Picasso, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Joyce and Proust meet at the Majestic Hotel for the artistic dinner of the century. The hotel is now re-named the Raphael.

"It is a May evening in Paris in 1922 … A supper party is being held in a private dining room at the Majestic, an hôtel de luxe in avenue Kléber, one of the twelve avenues named after Napoleon's generals which radiate out from the Arc de Triomphe."
• 17 avenue Kléber, near Arc de Triomphe, 16th arrondissement

Emile Zola, The Ladies' Delight (Au Bonheur des Dames), 1883

Emile Zola brings to pulsating life the glittering and chic department store based on Le Bon Marché. Designed by Eiffel, it is still thriving today.

"It was like the concourse of a railway station, surrounded by the balustrades of the two upper storeys, cut by suspended stairways and crisscrossed with bridges. And all this cast iron beneath the white light of the glass roof composed an airy architecture of complicated lacework."
• 24 rue de Sèvres, 7th arrondissement

• Malcolm Burgess is the publisher of Oxygen Books' City-lit series featuring some of the best-ever writing on favourite world cities, oxygenbooks.co.uk

• The 15 best recommendations, chosen by Malcolm Burgess from the comments below, will each receive a copy of City-lit Paris, worth £8.99, featuring writing by Joanne Harris, Julian Barnes, Kate Mosse, Gertrude Stein, Proust and Claude Izner among others. The books will be posted to the winners after they have been contacted by Guardian User Help. The article is open to comments until noon on Sunday 22 May

Check out the latest city-pick 2011-12 catalogue here (includes our new titles New York, Istanbul and St Petersburg)

Oxygen Books new catalogue has just arrived from the printers and we think it looks brilliant! All our current titles, plus city-pick New York, Istanbul and St Petersburg in special postcard-style format.

Do check it out here: Download Oxygen Books catalogue 2011-2012

If you'd like a copy sent to you please send your name and address details to: malcolm.burgess3@btopenworld.com

 

 

 

 

 

Springtime in Paris: a little tea, a little chat and a visit to a Parisian bookshop.

We've already waxed lyrical about www.bookstoreguide.org an amazing guide to the best bookstores (many English language) in European cities.

Now, as promised, we're featuring a city-pick city highlighted in the Bookstore Guide on a regular basis. This week it's Paris which, unsurprisingly, has to be one of the richest and most exciting cities for any booklover (and do check out the regular readings in Shakespeare and Company for the real flavour of writers native and visiting).

A Report from Paris

The next chapter of our Reports section, or BSG on the road as we like to call it, comes from the city which needs no introduction - Paris. We did our best to compile a selection of the local English bookstores that have impressed us the most, organized into three separate categories, so enjoy the read...

If we are to judge the inhabitants of a city by the number of bookstores in it, then Parisians indeed love to read. Heck, there are around 160 bookstores in the 5th arrondissement alone, and not to mention those 250+ bouquinistes (book stalls) along the River Seine and various Paris libraries throughout the city - Paris is surely a book crazed city. As we were walking its streets, often we found ourselves astounded at the fact that we kept bumping into a bookstore literally at every step. More importantly, nowadays, when independent bookstores are already on the endangered species list, a visit to Paris will surely make you feel like there still is a ray of hope for their survival. Suffice to say, not only a great number but a vast majority of these bookstores stocks only books in French but those who say that Paris has nothing to offer to the non-French speakers are either fools or simply very wrong.

When it comes to (purely) English language bookstores, be it new or secondhand and antiquarian, Paris has the most abounding offer when compared to other European cities in countries where English is not a native language. Many secondhand bookstores posses that special air of friendliness - something that "sterile" new books on clean shelves among neatly painted walls probably never will have. Of course, every bookstore is one exclusive universe for itself, and we may like them for countless reasons. So, we'll start our Report with our favorite category of bookstores:

Shakespeare & Co is one of very few bookstores, which has gained a widely respected legendary status. The word about this bookstore has spread way beyond Paris and even France, and during the years it has turned to something which can be described as a place of pilgrimage for aspiring authors and book lovers from all over the world. If you need more facts, consider the following: Shakespeare & Co has appeared in several movies (its most notable appearance links to the movie Before Sunset with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) and several books were written about it, this bookstore even has its own Wikipedia article. So you can imagine, that knowing all that made us eager to see it and to judge for ourselves, whether the legends correspond to reality. We definitely enjoyed our visit. Of course, Shakespeare and Co today isn't the same place it has been in the 60s, but it has still managed to conserve many aspects of the original atmosphere and just walking among its shelves makes you think about the incredible moments it has witnessed. We browsed, we visited the writer's room, played the piano, bought some postcards and left feeling very good that Shakespeare and Co is still there, with everything it represents. You can find a more detailed description of the bookstore in our post, and we're also recommending this neat short video, titled Shakespeare Sleeps Here, sent to us by one of our readers, which will tell you more about the culture, history, and evolution of the bookstore.

What we really liked about the Abbey Bookshop was its interior: books on the shelves, on the shelves behind the shelves, on the floor and on the books themselves: stacked all over the place, in several rooms and even in the basement - down from the floor reaching some 3 meters to the ceiling, making it slightly difficult but yet very very amusing to browse. Furthermore, it has this rustic feeling to it. Combine everything and there's your secondhand bookstore with a soul of its own, and what a soul it is. This Canadian-specialized bookstore is a recognizable trademark of many expats living in Paris and there's no surprise that you can see a huge Canadian flag hanging above the bookstore's entrance. Of course, the selection which Abbey Bookshop has to offer should by no means be undermined, on the contrary, we found it very impressive. Even the prices are rather friendly, especially on the books which were on a special offer, outside the bookstore. We were lucky enough to have found ourselves in the bookstore at the same time its owner, Brian Spence, was there. Brian offered us some coffee and we had a lengthy discussion on the Paris' bookmarket and, among other topics, the history of the building and the street where the bookstore is located.

After a lengthy journey from the center of Paris to the 6th arrondissement, we have finally reached our next destination - the bookstore by the name of Tea & Tattered Pages. If we were to sum up our impressions in one word, it would undoubtedly be the adjective charming. If it weren't for the price tags in Euro, Tea & Tattered Pages could just as well travel thirty years back in time and no one would find it suspicious. And this doesn't mean that this bookstore is an outdated institution which has nothing to offer in the 21st century. On the contrary, its preserved charm from the old days and its peacefulness definitely represent the greatest assets it has to offer. Browsing in Tea & Tattered pages equals forgetting about the outside world and never knowing what you are about to find - maybe the dusty paperback cover will turn out to be some cheap romance novel you'll quickly put back to its shelf and maybe it'll be the title you've been searching for in vain for a long time. It symbolizes the image of a true second hand bookstore which has stood the test of time, it's not stuck in the past, it just brings a precious piece of the past to the here and now. Luckily, bookstores like this one still exist, although their numbers have been diminishing, and a few more can be found in Paris. And as long as there are people who don't mind the long journey to the 6th arrondissement because they know that they'll be rewarded for it, Tea & Tattered Pages will remain to be one of them.

San Francisco Book Company was the last bookstore we have visited before leaving Paris and the saying "last but not least" can be applied in its case very well. Actually, this exclusively English second hand bookstore has been one of the highlights of our summer bookstore hunt. Although this place is completely packed with books, they manage to keep them displayed in a well-arranged manner so you can comfortably find the titles you're looking for. The English second hand bookstore scene in Paris is more than satisfactory and we were especially impressed by the fact that each one of these bookstores is unique in its own way. Besides the warm and friendly atmosphere of this bookstore there are two other facts that make San Francisco Book Co stand out - 1) Its fiction section - maybe we're subjective, but we were able to find several books by almost all of the authors who belong to our favorites, and this doesn't happen often, especially in second hand bookstores. 2) This bookstore offers its titles at the most affordable prices in Paris, which is something all the low-budget travelers will appreciate in the city which can hardly be labeled as price-friendly in general.

For those who are not that keen on books that have a smell, or as we prefer to call it 'a special scent' of secondhand books, there are always those bookstores which specialize in selling new books only. These may usually be more expensive but at least you'll know for sure that the pages of your books won't have any scribblings inside. For an out of print book, one would always turn to an antiquarian bookstore, while, on the other hand, new bookstores are always there for you when in need of a newer and recently published book. And so we move on to the next category - bookstores selling new books. To each his own.

We were quite optimistic about The Red Wheelbarrow - the bookstore, especially because it's named after one of the coolest poems ever written (by William Carlos Williams). The poem goes:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The poem is an imagist one and there is a whole other layer of meaning beneath its surface. It was written in a little over five minutes and the clear contrast between the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens and the division of the lines make this poem more than ordinary although the poem itself represents and praises the ordinary. This is also true about The Red Wheelbarrow - the bookstore - seemingly ordinary but yet much more than that. This small bookstore is filled with books - way more books than its size can take. It simply oozes familiarity and friendliness above all - its Canadian owner has made sure it does.

Another stop on our tour of Parisian English bookstores was in the historic Saint Germain de Prés neighborhood at the Village Voice Bookshop. Another independent Parisian bookstore which has achieved an almost legendary status during more than three decades of its existence, and another charismatic founder/owner who has decided to share her love for books with others. Village Voice Bookshop doesn't have a second-hand section, as it only sells new books, which gives its owner a better possibility to pick the titles she wants to offer to her customers. After the nice walk from the famous Jardin du Luxembourg we entered the rather narrow Rue Princesse and spotted the blue exterior of Village Voice. The face of this neighborhood has changed a lot and nowadays it is mostly home to fashion boutiques and expensive cafés, while Village Voice still stands as the last reminiscence of the old days. We wouldn't like our report to sound too nostalgic, but we've also heard that Village Voice Bookshop is struggling to survive and during our visit it was sadly empty. To end on a positive note we would like to stress that Village Voice still sticks to its principles and beliefs - the selection is still altogether different from the regular chain bookstore offer and author readings remain a regular feature of this bookstore.

However, these are not the only bookstores that Paris has to offer. For those with a sharp eye for art, there are many artsy bookstores and we've singled out a couple.

Even the fact that this bookstore is quite remote from the center of the city actually adds to its cool suburban/subculture image. It has been one long walk in the beaming sun, but Artazart was a must on our Bookstore Guide list for Paris. After visiting some great art bookstores in Brussels (Posada Art Books, Librairie Saint Hubert), we weren't that easy to impress anymore. However, Artazart is a completely different bookstore, which scores additional points not only for its stock, but also its looks. This bookstore doesn't try to reflect the latest trends, it is a part of the scene, and it sets the new trends itself. Artazart is specialized in one particular area of visual arts - design, and this is also the main focus of their stock. Actually, they claim to be Europe's number one design bookstore, and we wouldn't be that surprised if this statement was true. If we were to exaggerate a little bit, we could even say that this is probably the only bookstore where HOW something is written matters more than WHAT it says. Needless to say, this bookstore is a true delight for browsers, and it would be fun to hold a competition for the book with the best looking cover. Another positive impression is related to the atmosphere inside, which is very casual and relaxed.

When it comes to a massive stock of art books, the only serious threat to Artazart could perhaps be the bookstore at the Centre Pompidou (for those unaware, the Centre Pompidou is one of Paris' best known modern art buildings/museums). Actually, there are three bookstores in the Centre itself: the main one in the Forum (immediately after the entrance and no admission fee is needed to enter the bookstore) and two smaller ones (levels 4 and 6, both focusing on the materials and publications related to the temporary exhibitions in the Centre) and all three are owned by an independent company, the Librairie Flammarion Centre. The (main) bookstore, designed by Renzo Piano, the center's architect, looks stunning: the white interior, the postmodern design of the shelves, the organization of books - everything oozes modernity. It holds over 10,000 titles and the stock ranges from the material published by the Centre (various postcards, multimedia publications, etc.), to an enormous selection of books on general art, architecture and design, as well as various art magazines and reviews. All of the publications are mostly in English and French but you may stumble upon other languages here and there.

To sum it all up, the five days we spent in Paris during the summer of 2008 were hectic at several points, as there were so many things we wanted to see. But we've definitely enjoyed every moment of and we're glad that we're also able to offer you this défilé (as the French would call it) of the Parisian anglophone bookstore scene

For more details on these - and other Paris - bookshops click here.

For a wonderful account of Shakespeare and Company do check out Jeremy Mercer's Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs, also featured in our selection of some of the best-ever writing on Paris in city-lit Paris.