Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris - Softcover

Robb, Graham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330536230 ISBN 13: 9780330536233

Publisher: Picador, 2010

Synopsis

‘Quirky, amused and très British’ JULIAN BARNES

‘A collection of true stories, culled from Robb’s insatiable historical reading and lit by his imagination . . . So richly pleasurable that you feel it might emit a warm glow if you left it in a dark room’ JOHN CAREY, Book of the Week, Sunday Times

‘Robb has focused on what really matters, the human beings who shaped, or who were occasionally defeated by, their city . . . . Marvellously entertaining, boundingly energetic and original’ PHILIP HENSHER, Daily Telegraph

No-one knows a city like the people who live there – so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians is at once a book to read from cover to cover, to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and a book to return to again and again – rather like the city itself, in fact.

‘If you delight in the historical equivalent of finding a tiny restaurant frequented only by locals . . . then Robb will sate your appetite’ Evening Standard

‘The great and daring trick Robb pulls off is to make the familiar so unfamiliar that in every sense it is like seeing the city anew’ Observer

About this title

Review:

Ingenious...Marvelously entertaining, boundlessly energetic and original...This book is the sort of triumph that we have no right to expect to come from anyone in the steady way that Robb's masterly books come from him.--Philip Hensher

A superior historical guidebook for the unhurried traveler, and altogether a book to savor.

Graham Robb's new book is so richly pleasurable that you feel it might emit a warm glow if you left it in a dark room. Essentially it is a collection of true stories, culled from Robb's insatiable historical reading and lit by his imagination. He has the passion of a naturalist displaying a wall of rare butterflies or a cabinet of exotic corals, but his specimens are all human and walked the streets of Paris at some point between the French revolution and now...[A] generous and humane book.--John Carey ""Book of the Week" "

Robb, in employing the techniques of the novelist, animates his characters mainly for 'the pleasure of thinking about Paris.' That pleasure is also the reader's.--Brenda Wineapple

[Robb] has proved himself to be one of the more unusual and appealing historians currently striding the planet. In a better world his books would be best sellers everywhere....His book--argumentative, gallant, parked athwart oncoming historical traffic, as if on a dare--is as Parisian and as bracing as a freshly mixed Pernod and water.--Dwight Garner

Book Description:

The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0330536230
• ISBN 13: 9780330536233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496