AUDIOBOOK
About
Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Élysées to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of Père-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens, and the aristocratic Île Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine.
Downie wound up living in the chic Marais district, married to the Paris-born American photographer Alison Harris, an equally incurable walker and chronicler. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris and writing about the city he loves. An irreverent, witty romp featuring thirty-one short prose sketches of people, places, and daily life, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light ranges from the glamorous to the least-known corners and characters of the world's favorite city.
Downie wound up living in the chic Marais district, married to the Paris-born American photographer Alison Harris, an equally incurable walker and chronicler. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris and writing about the city he loves. An irreverent, witty romp featuring thirty-one short prose sketches of people, places, and daily life, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light ranges from the glamorous to the least-known corners and characters of the world's favorite city.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"I loved his collection of essays, and anyone whos visited Paris in the past, or plans to visit in the future, will be equally charmed."
David Lebovitz, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweet Life in Paris
"Like the guide who leads us through the Hermitage and its history in Sokurovs Russian Ark, David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. With him we discover Paris, a seemingly public city that is, in fact, full of secrets-great lives, lives wasted on the bizarre; forgotten artisans; lost graves (lost till now); the papillons nocturnes; and the poinçonneur des Lilas. I have walked some of the
Michael Ondaatje, Booker Prize-winning author of The English Patient
"Beautifully written and refreshingly original…Curious and attentive to detail, Downie is appreciative yet unflinching in describing his adopted home…Makes us see [Paris] in a different light."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review