Leïla Slimani on How to Read Your Way Through Paris

That is the primary story in a brand new sequence exploring the world by means of books. We’ve requested a few of our favourite writers to suggest studying that helps you get to know their cities and tips about literary landmarks to take a look at. We’ll be touring the world with them for the subsequent few months, from Madrid to Mexico Metropolis to Istanbul and past. Join the Books publication to ensure you don’t miss any stops!

Just a few years in the past, a younger Japanese vacationer approached me on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. In a shy voice, she requested, “The place are the writers?” I didn’t perceive what she meant. “I wish to see the writers,” she added. “In my guidebook it says that Paris is filled with them.” After all, I smiled and defined to her that occasions had modified and it was relatively uncommon to see well-known writers working in cafes. However I wouldn’t have dreamed of constructing enjoyable of her, as a result of that’s what I got here to Paris for too.

As a young person in Rabat, Morocco, I hung a photograph of Simone de Beauvoir on the Café de Flore on the wall of my bed room, together with one in every of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway on a terrace in Montparnasse. After I arrived in Paris on the age of 18, I had in thoughts the folks’s parade for the demise of Victor Hugo and the cafes on the Grands Boulevards the place Émile Zola’s characters drank themselves right into a stupor. For me, Paris was literature, its coronary heart and its capital — town of exiled writers, cursed poets and existentialist philosophers. And even at the moment, I imagine that there is no such thing as a different metropolis on the planet that offers a lot significance to writers: these of the previous, whose ghosts proceed to hang-out the streets, and people of the current, too, whom passers-by acknowledge as they might a singer or an actress. I’ve by no means lived in one other metropolis the place literature was so necessary.

What ought to I learn earlier than I pack my luggage?

I’d suggest a traditional, most likely Victor Hugo’s masterpieces “Les Misérables” or “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” Hugo was and stays one of many best geniuses of all time. And he captured, higher than anybody else, the soul of Paris and its folks. For a extra up to date imaginative and prescient, I like the “Vernon Subutex” trilogy, by Virginie Despentes. With the character of Vernon, a homeless document supplier, we uncover the Proper Financial institution of Paris — the bars, the loopy events, the blended neighborhoods. Additionally it is a unprecedented depiction of a gentrified Paris the place cash guidelines.

What books or authors ought to I deliver together with me?

For my part, you must learn one ebook per district. Zola for the Grands Boulevards and the Ninth Arrondissement; I significantly like “Nana” and “L’Assommoir” (which has had numerous English-language titles). His description of the Parc Monceau in “The Kill” can be extraordinary. Patrick Modiano for “La Place de l’Étoile” (the primary of three novels launched in English translation as “The Occupation Trilogy”) and a dive into the Paris of the Occupation. Marguerite Duras’s “The Battle,” to relive the time when the Lutetia Resort welcomed Holocaust survivors getting back from the camps. James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” for Les Halles. I additionally love “Good Morning, Midnight,” by Jean Rhys, for its gorgeously evocative scenes of the Fifth Arrondisement within the interwar years. It’s excellent to learn when you’re in Paris: The story is so unhappy, but so totally stunning, following a girl who returns to town after an extended absence to reckon with a tragedy from her previous. I additionally suggest “Disturbance,” by Philippe Lançon, a masterpiece and a heartbreaking ebook a few man who survived the Charlie Hebdo assaults and recounts his restoration on the Val-de-Grâce hospital.

If I’ve no time for day journeys, what books can take me out of town as a substitute?

I like Normandy, solely two hours from Paris — a land of nice authors, reminiscent of Gustave Flaubert and Man de Maupassant. I particularly like Maupassant’s “A Lady’s Life,” an virtually excellent novel. And if you happen to go to the seaside, it’s essential to learn the passages that Marcel Proust devotes in “In Search of Misplaced Time” to Balbec, an imaginary city impressed by Cabourg. And, in fact, Michel Houellebecq’s “The Map and the Territory” for a imaginative and prescient of up to date France: It’s a sensible, humorous and merciless ebook a few France that’s disintegrating and whose cities are being remodeled into museums.

What books can take me behind closed doorways and present me hidden sides of town?

I like “Pigalle Individuals,” by Jane Evelyn Atwood. Atwood, a photographer, met a gaggle of intercourse staff in Pigalle on the finish of the Nineteen Seventies. She pictures them with none voyeurism however with nice tenderness and tells the tales of those ladies who stay on the margins, who take medicine, and who’re additionally trustworthy buddies. It’s deeply transferring.

“The Margot Affair,” by Sanaë Lemoine, is splendidly Parisian with out resorting to any of the standard clichés. It’s a glimpse into the world of politics and journalism. The main points of French meals, every day routines and structure are very properly captured by the creator.

Which author is everybody on the town speaking about?

Annie Ernaux! She’s been writing autofiction for greater than 30 years and has turn out to be an actual feminist icon in France. There’s additionally loads of speak about Constance Debré, a radical author who left her husband and her bourgeois life and who now embraces her homosexuality and complete freedom. Her newest ebook, “Nom,” has triggered a sensation.

What audiobooks would make for good firm whereas I stroll round?

Take heed to poetry — in French! Poems by Charles Baudelaire or Paul Verlaine, whereas strolling alongside the quays of the Seine. Or poems by Jacques Prévert, when night time falls and also you stroll by means of the streets of Montmartre. You don’t want to know all of the phrases. It’s like listening to music!

What’s a superb place to curve up with a ebook? Any bookstores I ought to go to?

My favourite bookshop in Paris is Shakespeare and Company — for the selection of books, the welcome and the kindness of Sylvia Whitman, the proprietor. She is great and gives you excellent recommendation! However you too can learn on a bench in a park. My favourite is the backyard of the Palais Royal when the magnolias are in bloom. In winter, I like to recommend sitting at the back of a restaurant, consuming a glass of wine whereas it’s raining outdoors.

And for younger readers, any suggestions?

“The Mona Lisa Thriller,” by Pat Hutchins, through which kids staff as much as work out who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, and “A Hundred Million Francs,” by Paul Berna, through which buddies who play on the streets of Paris are shocked when a stranger provides them some huge cash for the damaged outdated picket horse they use of their video games. When it’s stolen, they got down to uncover why it’s so particular. In any other case, “Rooftoppers,” by Katherine Rundell, is a superb journey story. And naturally “The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin,” by Maurice Leblanc, lately made right into a Netflix sequence with Omar Sy.