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Haussmann
- Author
- Paul LaFarge
- Narrator
- Erik Bauersfeld
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 26 June 2005
- Run Time
- 11 hours 43 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
LaFarge’s stunning novel of love, betrayal, and exploitation is based on themes involving the life of the great city planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann.
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was the architect of modern Paris. In two decades, from 1853 to 1869, he transformed the cramped, filthy lanes of the medieval city into the airy boulevards and green parks of today. Yet there is a story that, on his deathbed, Haussmann wished to undo everything he’d built. “Would that it had died with me!” he is supposed to have said. What is the secret of the baron’s last regret?
To answer this question, author Paul LaFarge tells the story of a three-sided affair that pitted love against ambition and architecture against flesh, in this sweeping drama of a changing social order.
Critics Review
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“Imaginative…compelling storytelling…we can’t help reading on.”
New York Times Book Review
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“LaFarge is a confident, tireless trickster and yarn spinner…a magician on the scale of Prospero.”
San Francisco Chronicle
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“With his dazzling gift for bringing irretrievable cities to life, LaFarge conjures sinous, melancholic otherworlds that feel wholly tangible.”
Village Voice
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“LaFarge is a master storyteller with cleverness and inventiveness to spare…[An] ambitious and playful novel…full of artful prose, wit, and provocative ideas.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
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“LaFarge…neatly integrates geographical and cultural references into the tale, making this as much an enlightening history of Paris as it is a tragic, affecting love story. An astonishing amount of research, a believable tone, and a captivating story all come together to make this work a stunning success.”
Publishers Weekly
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“[Haussman’s] fascinating lifestyle and the passions from which he patterned his life are given a sensitive understanding by Eric Bauersfeld. He reads with the subtlety of one who is standing in for the author, but indeed he gives full color to the story. As his voice and manner offer the sound of the Old World, he takes us through the upheaval of a changing social order—and we enjoy the sound of it.”
AudioFile
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“Lavishingly imagined…The tensions among duty, artifice, and passion are vividly played out in a superbly realized period setting.”
Kirkus Reviews
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“LaFarge peers into the souls of his characters and the Parisians in general, dropping pearls of philosophy to explain the tenor of their lives. Bauersfeld narrates with a mellow old man’s voice tuned to the emotional lives of his quirky characters. Poetical French personal and place names trip smoothly from his tongue.”
Kliatt
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Paul LaFarge
- Narrator
- Erik Bauersfeld
- Duration
- 11 hours 43 minutes
- Release Date
- 26 June 2005
- ISBN
- 9781483055633
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary
Synopsis
LaFarge’s stunning novel of love, betrayal, and exploitation is based on themes involving the life of the great city planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann.Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was the architect of modern Paris. In two decades, from 1853 to 1869, he transformed the cramped, filthy lanes of the medieval city into the airy boulevards and green parks of today. Yet there is a story that, on his deathbed, Haussmann wished to undo everything he’d built. “Would that it had died with me!” he is supposed to have said. What is the secret of the baron’s last regret?To answer this question, author Paul LaFarge tells the story of a three-sided affair that pitted love against ambition and architecture against flesh, in this sweeping drama of a changing social order.
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