For almost 30 years, French publisher Parigramme has been putting out books on just one inexhaustible subject: Paris. Nearly all are excellent, and a handful are in English or – like this new addition to the catalogue – bilingual. With the dimensions and production standards of a sleek exhibition catalogue and released in good time for the 2022 centenary of Proust’s death, this is an elegant pictorial survey of Belle Epoque Paris as the great author knew it, featuring dozens of paintings and photos of people (those moustaches!) and the city. It’s a madeleine in book form.
A la Recherche du Paris de Marcel Proust (Henri Raczymow, Parigramme, 2021, ISBN 9782373951608, 136pp, €14.90)
NOTES
This book review was published in the January 2022 issue of France magazine.
For more information about Paris, click here; for more about this and other titles from Parigramme, click here. To read more of my book reviews and other published work, click here.
The image at the top of this post is Henri Gervex’s 1909 oil painting Une soirée au Pré-Catelan, held by the Musée Carnavalet; for more information, click here.