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A propos de l'auteur
Gilles Schlesser is the author of many novels, including mysteries, as well as essays and a biography of the French singer and actor Marcel Mouloudji.
Simon Beaver grew up in the South of England, but moved to Paris nearly 40 years ago. He now lives in Brittany. For three decades he has been adapting books, TV and movie scripts, songs and biographies into English, writing subtitles and recording voiceovers.
Gilles Targat is French photographer who specializes in historical architecture and whose work has been published in more than 25 books. He splits his time between Normany and Paris.
Résumé
Even seasoned Francophiles and French literature buffs will find new and intriguing descriptions, anecdotes, and quotes in Literary Strolls through Paris. With over 350 images, including rare portraits, paintings, and vintage book covers, this book brings three centuries of literary Paris to life.
"I have often dreamed of writing a book about Paris that would be like some great, haphazard stroll on which one finds nothing that one looks for, but many things that one does not."--Julien Green
Prolific novelist, mystery writer, and essayist Gilles Schlesser has fulfilled Julien Green's wish with Literary Strolls through Paris, an unconventional and delightful volume--more writer's notebook than traditional guidebook--that compiles tantalizing details, descriptions, anecdotes, and accounts, bringing three centuries of literary Paris to life.
In the pages of Literary Strolls through Paris, readers find arresting details and telling quotes--take, for example, Brassai's evocative description of photographing Henry Miller: "I'll never forget... those sea-green eyes - the eyes of a sailor used to watching the horizon through the spray." Schlesser also includes essential literary addresses (Proust's, for instance) but takes the greatest pleasure in steering the reader to locations that are "improbable," "incongruous," and "ephemeral"-- addresses that rarely appear in less sophisticated guides. We learn about Victor Hugo's unconventional living arrangements--he lived in splendor with an eleven-person household, a parrot, and a mistress tucked away nearby--which his visitor Charles Dickens describes as "'like an old curiosity shop, or the property-room of some gloomy, vast, old theatre."
Organized by neighborhood, the guide is illustrated with more than 350 images--including rarely published portraits, paintings, and vintage book covers from French archives. Literary Strolls through Paris will also introduce to Anglophone readers to a Pleiades of luminaries who are seminal to French culture, as well as re-introduce many well-known authors, from Chateaubriand to Ernest Hemingway (who, as Schlesser notes, Sylvia Beach nicknamed "Mr. Awfully Nice").
