A Walk Through Paris, Eric Hazan
The Book Office is delighted to present the Book of the week: A Walk Through Paris. A radical exploration, by Eric Hazan.
You're stuck in the house, out of the office, and looking for a great book to face the snow?
Here, at the book office, we have the one for you!
While London wakes up to a blanket of snow, grab a book, take a cup of tea!
From the publisher
Eric Hazan, author of the acclaimed The Invention of Paris, leads us by the hand in this walk from Ivry to Saint-Denis, roughly following the meridian that divides Paris into east and west, and passing such familiar landmarks as the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pompidou Centre, the Gare du Nord and Montmartre, as well as little-known alleyways and arcades.
Filled with historical anecdotes, geographical observations and literary references, Hazan’s walk guides us through an unknown Paris. He shows us how, through planning and modernisation, the city’s revolutionary past has been erased in order to enforce a reactionary future; but by walking and observation, he shows us how we can regain our knowledge of the radical past of the city of Robespierre, the Commune, Sartre and the May ’68 uprising. And by drawing on his own life story, as surgeon, publisher and social critic, Hazan vividly illustrates a radical life lived in the city of revolution.
Why we liked it at the Book Office
Discover A Walk Through Paris (Une traversée de Paris, Le Seuil, 2016), a wonderful and interactive discovery of our French capital with Eric Hazan, a native and genuine Parisian.
Come from the centre of Ivry to Saint-Denis for a long walk across the author's city and learn more about the 'barrière d'Italie', the Bièvre (a river from the South of Paris, now disappeared), the genesis of 'The Catacombes', the great underground Parisian cemetery, or the future of the Samaritaine.
Eric Hazan is mixing references, maps, photographs and drawings about the historical, literary and cinematic Paris at a time when the city was entering modernity.
He also uses an intimate tone, giving historical news mixed with personal memories from across the city.
'My own path is rather a daytime one, with different orientations: from Ivry to Saint-Denis, more or less following the dividing line between the east and west of Paris, or what you could call the Paris meridian.
I chose this itinerary without much consideration, but later on it became clear to me that it was no accident, that this line followed the meanders of an existence begun close to the Luxembourg garden, led for a long time opposite the Observatoire, and continued further to the east, in Belleville, at the time I am writing, but with long spells in the meantime in Barbès and on the north side of the Montmartre hill.
And in fact, under the effect of the peerless mental exercise that is walking, memories have risen to the surface street by street, even very distant fragments of the past on the border of forgetfulness.'
The author
Eric Hazan is the founder of the publisher La Fabrique and the author of several books, including Notes on the Occupation and the highly acclaimed Invention of Paris. He has lived in Paris, France, all his life.
Discover his other books translated into English
- The Invention of Paris. A History in Footsteps, translated by David Fernbach, Verso Books, April 2011
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