Haussmann, or the Distinction

✍ Scribed by Paul La Farge

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 246 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1466865229

✦ Synopsis

A stunning, imaginative novel about the great architect of Paris

Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who demolished and rebuilt Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the first urbanist of the modern era--and perhaps the greatest. He presided over two decades of riches, peace, and progress in a city the likes of which no one had ever seen before, with boulevards monumentally conceived and brilliantly lit, clean water, public transportation, and sewers that were the envy of every nation in the world. Yet there is a story that, on his deathbed, Haussmann wished all his work undone. "Would that it had died with me!" he is supposed to have said. What is the secret of the baron's last regret?

To answer this question, Haussmann tells the story of Madeleine, a foundling who grew up in the magical, chaotic world that Haussmann destroyed; of de Fonce, one of the great artistes démolisseurs who tore Paris down and sold...