The Invention of Paris

Takes the reader on an historical tour through the construction of Paris, exploring the places and struggles that have marked its growth. This book focuses both on the literary and cultural representations of the city, as well as riots, rebellions and revolutions - throughout the nineteenth century and up until 1968.

---

The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan.
Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur's ear for a story with a historian's command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists-Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, and Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval and Rousseau.
It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted and vitalized by the history of the barricades, which Hazan retells in rich detail. The Invention of Paris opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital's vibrant and bloody past, revealing the city in striking new colors.