“Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light” ($19.95, Counterpoint)
Paris has always been known as a haven for writers, but did you know that more than 400 streets, squares and promenades honor them? The writers are not just French, either. The non-French are celebrated here, too, including Dante, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway. Author David Burke divides “Writers in Paris” into three broad areas: the Left Bank, the River and the islands, and the Right Bank, as well including a few places around Paris in his picaresque and ambulatory journey through the city’s winding streets in search of literary sites. From George Whitman’s Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore that still hosts poetry and fiction readings “and maintains a crash pad upstairs for aspiring writers” to Hemingway’s first residence in Paris (a “plain, old apartment building”), Burke comments on the cafes and cabarets frequented by writers, the hotels where they stayed, the magazines that published their work and the cemeteries where they lie as permanent residents. This enchanting book is illustrated with more than 100 black-and- white photographs and maps. Chicago Tribune
