Description

‘The most bizarre and delicious of travel books’ Observer

Julian Green was born to American parents in Paris in 1900, and spent most of his life in the French capital. Paris is an extraordinary, lyrical love letter to the city, taking the reader on an imaginative journey around its secret stairways, courtyards, alleys and hidden places. Whether evoking the cool of a deserted church on a hot summer’s day, remembering Notre Dame in a winter storm in 1940, describing chestnut trees lit up at night like ‘Japanese lanterns’ or lamenting the passing of street cries and old buildings, his book is filled with unforgettable imagery. It is a meditation on getting lost and wasting time, and on what it truly means to know a city.

‘Truthful, unpretentious and haunting’ The Times Literary Supplement

Publisher Review

Truthful, unpretentious and haunting The Times Literary Supplement Exquisitely literary in a traditional French manner New York Review of Books Paris has many moments of truly arresting beauty...the attention to detail is astonishing, and reflects the memories of someone who has devoted years of their life to the art of getting lost in the city Observer A magical memoir of Paris...His non-fiction has a tender emotional directness that remains startling and original...Like many great writers on urban life, Green became the city he inhabited, and his book is as much a guide to the inside of his mind as it is to Paris Telegraph