Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

✍ Scribed by Robb, Graham

• Book ID: 108436461
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780393067248

✦ Synopsis

**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 Bohème*, 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.