The Invention of Paris

<i>The Invention of Paris</i> is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan. Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur’s ear for a story with a historian’s command of the facts he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati the philosophers and the artists—Balzac Baudelaire Blanqui Flaubert Hugo Maney and Proust of course; but also Doisneau Nerval and Rousseau. It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted and vitalized by the history of the barricades which Hazan retells in rich detail. <i>The Invention of Paris</i> opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital’s vibrant and bloody past revealing the city in striking new colors.