Paris Stories

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend, a frequent contributor to The New Yorkerfor close to fifty years who has, in the words of The New York Times, "radically reshaped the short story for decade after decade." Michael Ondaatje's new selection of Gallant's work gathers some of the most memorable of her stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived. Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

Internationally celebrated, award-winning author Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend: an undisputed master of the short story whose peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequalled skill. This new selection of Gallant’s stories, edited by novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set in Paris, where Gallant has long lived. Here she writes of expatriates and locals, exile and homecoming, and of the illusions of youth and age, offering a kaleidoscopic impression of the world within the world that is Paris.

French Tales is a collection of twenty-two translated stories associated with the twenty-two regions of France. The book, which includes both well-known and little-known writers, for example Prosper Mérimée in the nineteenth century and Anne-Marie Garat in the twenty-first, affords readers a panoramic view of French society and culture, reflecting, as it does, its variety and diversity from Brittany to Corsica. Writers include among others Maupassant, Zola, Annie Saumont, Marcel Aymé, Didier Daeninckx and Stephane Émond. The subject-matter ranges from stories about marriage, the First World War and homelessness to house-buying, childhood and honour-killing. Following the model of Paris Tales, also translated by Helen Constantine, each story is illustrated with a striking photograph and there is a map indicating the position of the French regions. There is an introduction and notes to accompany the stories and a selection of Further Reading. The book will appeal to people who love travelling or are armchair travellers, as much as to those who love France and things French.

Marton first spent time in Paris during college in 1968, when France was in revolt; as a young student she was inspired by researching the history of her survivalist family who had escaped from communist Hungary to France. Ten years later, Paris was the setting for her big career break as ABC bureau chief, as well as where she found passionate love with Peter Jennings, the man to whom she was married for 15 years and had two children. It was again in Paris, years later, where she found enduring love with her husband, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. And it was to Paris where Kati returned in order to rebuild her spirit in the wake of Richard's death. Kati Marton's newest memoir is a candid exploration of many kinds of love, as well as a love letter to the city of Paris itself.

By turns humorous, bittersweet, historical, or surreal, each of these carefully selected stories invites readers to explore a different facet of Paris.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A missing person, a grieving family, a curious clue: a half-finished manuscript set in Paris Once a week, I chase men who are not my husband. . . . When eccentric novelist Robert Eady abruptly vanishes, he leaves behind his wife, Leah, their daughters, and, hidden in an unexpected spot, plane tickets to Paris. Hoping to uncover clues--and her husband--Leah sets off for France with her girls. Upon their arrival, she discovers an unfinished manuscript, one Robert had been writing without her knowledge . . . and that he had set in Paris. The Eady girls follow the path of the manuscript to a small, floundering English-language bookstore whose weary proprietor is eager to sell. Leah finds herself accepting the offer on the spot. As the family settles into their new Parisian life, they trace the literary paths of some beloved Parisian classics, including Madeline and The Red Balloon, hoping more clues arise. But a series of startling discoveries forces Leah to consider that she may not be ready for what solving this mystery might do to her family--and the Paris she thought she knew. Charming, haunting, and triumphant, Paris by the Book follows one woman's journey as she writes her own story, exploring the power of family and the magic that hides within the pages of a book.

If Paris has a heart, its pulse is surely in its grand hotels. Splendid as ocean liners, they are at the hub of the most extravagant lifestyles. This lavish volume brings us twenty-five Paris hotels, written about by a leading French critic of gastronomy and lifestyle.

When Australian Jane Paech moves to Paris, her visions of afternoons in bijou bistros and bookshops on the Left Bank are kept in check by the needs of a young family and a long to-do list that includes apartment-hunting, school selection, and multiple trips to IKEA. Through a collection of sharp observations, insightful travel articles and laugh-out-loud anecdotes, A Family in Parisconveys the joys and difficulties of living in this most famous of cities. It introduces us to the Parisians and their eccentricities, explores the intricate rituals of daily life, and takes us beyond the well-trodden tourist sites to the best eating spots, boutiques, museums and markets that only a local could know about. Frank, intimate and beautifully photographed, A Family in Parisis about making a home in a strange land, finding a community, and discovering the joy of renewal.

Paris Stories gathers classic stories about the City of Light by a wide range of writers across four centuries. Perhaps no other European city has so captured the imagination of the artistically and romantically minded. Laurence Sterne explores the temptations of the French capital in a teasing study of foreign mores, and Restif de la Bretonne provides an eyewitness account of the horrors and glories of the French Revolution. Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola offer fascinating portraits of the growing metropolis’s teeming humanity; the Goncourt brothers chronicle its glittering literary circles; and Huysmans describes a memorable evening at the Folies Bergère. Colette recounts the sensual adventures of a young girl in the decadent Paris of the early twentieth century, while F. Scott Fitzgerald revels in its urban glamour. Jean Rhys’s lost heroines wander from café to café, James Baldwin celebrates the city’s sexual freedoms, and Raymond Queneau gleefully reinvents the language of the street. In more recent decades, Michel Tournier’s North African immigrant walks a camel along the boulevards and Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano nostalgically maps the famed Parisian arrondissements. Theatrical and elegant, seamy and intellectual, Paris has never lost its alluring power, richly evoked in these compelling and seductive tales.

Internationally celebrated, award-winning author Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend: an undisputed master of the short story whose peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequalled skill. This new selection of Gallant’s stories, edited by novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set in Paris, where Gallant has long lived. Here she writes of expatriates and locals, exile and homecoming, and of the illusions of youth and age, offering a kaleidoscopic impression of the world within the world that is Paris.