Parisians, Graham Robb
Parisians, Graham Robb
List: $21.99 | Sale: $15.39
Club: $10.99

Parisians
An Adventure History of Paris

Author: Graham Robb

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 13 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/03/2010


Synopsis

This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction.

A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night, Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter.

An aristocratic woman, fleeing the Louvre, takes a wrong turn and loses her way in the nameless streets of the Left Bank. For want of a map—there were no reliable ones at the time—Marie-Antoinette will go to the guillotine.

Baudelaire, Baron Haussmann, the real-life Mimi of La Bohème, Proust, Charles de Gaulle (who is suspected of having faked an assassination attempt on himself in Notre Dame)—these and many more make up Robb's cast of characters. The result is a resonant, intimate history with the power of a great novel.

About Graham Robb

Bestselling author Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is an acclaimed historian and biographer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has won the Whitbread Biography Prize and the Heinemann Award for Victor Hugo, as well as the Ondaatje Prize and Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France. His book Parisians was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. He lives on the Anglo-Scottish border.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah

Robb seems to expect you to have some idea of History and even some of the French Language so I wouldn't say the book is an easy read, but it is a very entertaining one! His habit of setting a scene without letting you know who you are looking at can be a bit annoying at times. However the stories i......more

Goodreads review by Katie

I almost ALWAYS feel guilty, when abandoning a book. I picked this up in anticipation of my upcoming trip with the hopes that it's a Bill Bryson-style history of Paris, with lots of interesting little obscure tidbits about Parisian history. I hoped it would give me some enlightenment into the lives......more

Goodreads review by Irena

I would have given this book 3.5 stars if half stars existed on goodreads. I found out a couple of fascinating historical facts from this book that made it absolutely worth reading even though I did not always share the author's take on the events. The book is written in a well-flowing, masterful pro......more