Paris, Paris

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What to expect

Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-├ëlys├®es to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of P├¿re-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens, and the aristocratic ├Äle Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine.

Downie wound up living in the chic Marais district, married to the Paris-born American photographer Alison Harris, an equally incurable walker and chronicler. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris and writing about the city he loves. An irreverent, witty romp featuring thirty-one short prose sketches of people, places, and daily life, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light ranges from the glamorous to the least-known corners and characters of the world's favorite city.

Critics Review

  • “I loved his collection of essays, and anyone
    who’s visited Paris in the past, or plans to visit in the future, will be
    equally charmed.”

    David Lebovitz, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweet Life in Paris
  • “Like the guide who leads us through the
    Hermitage and its history in Sokurov’s Russian Ark, David Downie is
    the master of educated curiosity. With him we discover Paris, a seemingly
    public city that is, in fact, full of secrets—great lives, lives wasted on
    the bizarre; forgotten artisans; lost graves (lost till now); the ‘papillons
    nocturnes’; and the ‘poinçonneur des Lilas.’ I have walked some of the city’s
    streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.”

    Michael Ondaatje, Booker Prize–winning author of The English Patient
  • “Beautifully written and refreshingly
    original…Curious and attentive to detail, Downie is appreciative yet
    unflinching in describing his adopted home…Makes us see [Paris] in a different
    light.”

    San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
  • “The delightful and insightful essays in Paris,
    Paris
     meld history, atmosphere, and observations on Paris places,
    Paris people, and Paris phenomena.”

    Chicago Tribune
  • “Downie is a saunterer, wandering down the
    narrow ancient streets of the Île de la Cité, picnicking in storied graveyards
    like Père Lachaise, observing a seduction at Jardin du Luxembourg with a birder’s
    patience…Captures the sort of people and places missed by those jetting from
    starred bistros to hotels with showers.”

    Philadelphia Inquirer
  • “Compelling…A rapturous, history-rich love poem.”

    Toronto Star

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