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Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light
David Burke
#UC3522
Hardcover, 248 pages, 2008
$26.00
In the introduction to this lively romp through Parisian literary history, David Burke contends of Paris that "no other city has attracted so much literary talent, launched so many illustrious careers, or produced such a wealth of enduring literature." It's a bold claim that is substantiated by the sheer number of great writers—both French natives and expatriates—whose homes, haunts, workspaces, and tombs Burke entertainingly investigates on this leisurely guided stroll through the literary quartiers of the Left Bank, the islands of the Seine, and the Right Bank. From Place du Panthéon, where the tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau are a short walk from the childhood home of Jean-Paul Sartre, to Place Vendôme, where Marcel Proust, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway frequented the bar at the Ritz, Burke offers entertaining tidbits on the colorful personal lives and remarkable cultural contributions of dozens of the world-famous denizens of the Parisian literary scene. Writers in Paris is a fresh and fascinating guide to Paris for a jet-setting or armchair-traveling Francophile/bibliophile.
(AG)
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