Balzac's Paris

Praise for The Invention of Paris -- : This is a wondrous book, either to be read at home with a decent map, or carried about sur place through areas no tourists bother with. -- Adam Thorpe * Guardian * Hazan is all business. He trudges through Paris street by street, quoting what Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire or Kafka said about a particular spot, pointing out where barricades were once erected and thieves gathered for drinks. -- Donald Morrison * Financial Times * Amid the intellectual murkiness of the European scene, a few bright flames are burning: as witness the work of Eric Hazan. * New Left Review * Few will be able to resist. Hazan's brick-by-brick account of the city's history of strife and political posturing is riveting. * Publishers Weekly * Hazan wants to rescue individual moments from general forgetting and key sites from the bland homogenization of international city development; he is also a passionate left-wing historian seeking to rescue the truth of Paris's revolutionary past. -- Julian Barnes * London Review of Books * One of the greatest books about the city anyone has written in decades, towering over a crowded field, passionate and lyrical and sweeping and immediate. * New York Review of Books * This book is both a political and aesthetic delight, uncovering the real mysteries of Paris. -- Andrew Hussey, author of <i>Paris: The Secret History</i> With its astonishing breadth of reference and incredible detail, this is a must for all lovers of Paris. -- Kevin Rushby, author of <i>Paradise: A History of the Idea that Rules the World</i>