Books

Wanna play “house”? Within Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual (sic, there is no colon), published in 1978, the Paris-born Perec plays house with the tenants of his fictional apartment building at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier,...

A few years ago, I got into the habit of making book lists. Not as memory aids (although they are certainly helpful that way), but for the sheer joy of keeping track of my...

Mark Greenside is the author of two books about his part-time life in Plobien, a village in Finistère, Brittany. I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do), his 2009 memoir, tells the story of how, to...

Ze French Do It Better: A Lifestyle Guide, which is available in both French and English language versions, is a witty insider guide to life in France. The wit is of the arch, ultra-sophistiqué,...

We're offering one lucky reader the chance to win a ‘Paris Dreams’ collection. We have teamed up with lovely author Katrina Lawrence to celebrate the American and Canadian launch of Paris Dreaming: What the City...

Trevor McFarquhar is the protagonist, and narrator, of The Art of Regret, a novel set in Paris, to which he was brought--quite unwillingly--by his American mother, into a life in France at the age...

Under Occupation: A Novel is the fifteenth in Alan Furst’s series of espionage thrillers, all set in Europe between the years of 1933 and 1943. I asked Furst, in an interview conducted in 2016,...

Each year the American Library in Paris honors an exceptional work written originally in English, that deepens and stimulates our understanding of France or the French. The American Library in Paris Book Award was...

Parisians love books. Just take a peek at the bouquinistes lining the quays of the Seine. And Parisians also love design. These two passions combine happily in their annual book fairs. Throughout the year,...

Edith de Belleville was born and raised in Paris in the Belleville section of the city. She studied law at the Sorbonne University, where she earned a post-graduate degree in labor law; she has...

Monsieur Mediocre: One American Learns the High Art of Being Everyday French is a delightful collection of essays describing the author’s life in France. Married to a Frenchwoman he met when she was working as a waitress...

Every country has moments in its history—often much longer than moments—that are a source of profound national shame. In this regard, despite her reputation as the birthplace of the Declaration of the Rights of Man...