Author: Graham Robb
Year: 2010
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Genres/categories:
History, Non Fiction, Travel
Culture: France
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ISBNs:
9780393339734
0393339734 |
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The secrets of the City of Light, revealed in the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten--by the author of the acclaimed The Discovery of France.
This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction.
A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter. An aristocratic woman, fleeing the Louvre, takes a wrong turn and loses her way in the nameless streets of the Left Bank. For want of a map--there were no reliable ones at the time--Marie-Antoinette will go to the guillotine. Baudelaire, Baron Haussmann, the real-life Mimi of La Boheme, Proust, Charles de Gaulle (who is suspected of having faked an assassination attempt on himself in Notre Dame) --these and many more are Robb's cast of characters. The result is a resonant, intimate history with the power of a great novel. 16 pages of illustrations.
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