popular ! The Parisians by Graham Robb Hardback

The New York Times bestseller: the secrets of the City of Light, revealed in the lives of the terrific, the near-great, and the forgotten—by the author of the acclaimed The Discovery of France.


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, of the lives of the outstanding, the near-great, and the forgotten.



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. A well-dressed 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.