Leïla Slimani on How to Read Your Way Through Paris

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A number of years in the past, a younger Japanese vacationer approached me on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. In a shy voice, she requested, “Where are the writers?” I didn’t perceive what she meant. “I would like to see the writers,” she added. “In my guidebook it says that Paris is full of them.” Of course, I smiled and defined to her that occasions had modified and it was moderately uncommon to see well-known writers working in cafes. But I wouldn’t have dreamed of creating enjoyable of her, as a result of that’s what I got here to Paris for too.

As a youngster 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. When I arrived in Paris on the age of 18, I had in thoughts the individuals’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 as we speak, I consider that there isn’t any different metropolis on the earth 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 baggage?

I might advocate a traditional, in all probability Victor Hugo’s masterpieces “Les Misérables” or “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” Hugo was and stays one of many biggest geniuses of all time. And he captured, higher than anybody else, the soul of Paris and its individuals. For a extra modern imaginative and prescient, I like the “Vernon Subutex” trilogy, by Virginie Despentes. With the character of Vernon, a homeless file vendor, we uncover the Right Bank of Paris — the bars, the loopy events, the blended neighborhoods. It can be a rare depiction of a gentrified Paris the place cash guidelines.

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

In my opinion, it’s best to learn one ebook per district. Zola for the Grands Boulevards and the Ninth Arrondissement; I notably 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 War,” to relive the time when the Lutetia Hotel 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 good to learn when you’re in Paris: The story is so unhappy, but so totally stunning, following a lady who returns to town after an extended absence to reckon with a tragedy from her previous. I additionally advocate “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 an alternative?

I like Normandy, solely two hours from Paris — a land of nice authors, similar to Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant. I particularly like Maupassant’s “A Woman’s Life,” an nearly good novel. And when you go to the seaside, it’s essential to learn the passages that Marcel Proust devotes in “In Search of Lost 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 is an excellent, humorous and merciless ebook a few France that’s disintegrating and whose cities are being reworked into museums.

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

I like “Pigalle People,” by Jane Evelyn Atwood. Atwood, a photographer, met a bunch of intercourse staff in Pigalle on the finish of the Seventies. She images them with none voyeurism however with nice tenderness and tells the tales of those girls who stay on the margins, who take medicine, and who’re additionally trustworthy associates. It is deeply transferring.

“The Margot Affair,” by Sanaë Lemoine, is splendidly Parisian with out resorting to any of the standard clichés. It is a glimpse into the world of politics and journalism. The particulars of French meals, each day routines and structure are very effectively captured by the writer.

Which author is everybody on the town speaking about?

Annie Ernaux! She’s been writing autofiction for greater than 30 years and has change into an actual feminist icon in France. There can be plenty of speak about Constance Debré, a radical author who left her husband and her bourgeois life and who now embraces her homosexuality and whole freedom. Her newest ebook, “Nom,” has prompted a sensation.

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

Listen 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 the streets of Montmartre. You don’t want to perceive all of the phrases. It is like listening to music!

What’s a very good place to curl 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 fantastic and offers you superb recommendation! But 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, ingesting a glass of wine whereas it’s raining outdoors.

And for younger readers, any suggestions?

“The Mona Lisa Mystery,” by Pat Hutchins, by which kids staff up to work out who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, and “A Hundred Million Francs,” by Paul Berna, by which associates who play on the streets of Paris are shocked when a stranger presents them some huge cash for the damaged outdated picket horse they use of their video games. When it’s stolen, they set out to uncover why it’s so particular. Otherwise, “Rooftoppers,” by Katherine Rundell, is a superb journey story. And in fact “The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin,” by Maurice Leblanc, not too long ago made right into a Netflix collection with Omar Sy.