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A walker´s guide to Paris, taking us through its past, present and possible futures

Eric Hazan, author of the acclaimed The Invention of Paris, leads us by the hand in this walk from Ivry to Saint-Denis, roughly following the meridian that divides Paris into east and west, and passing such familiar landmarks as the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pompidou Centre, the Gare du Nord and Montmartre, as well as little-known alleyways and arcades. Filled with historical anecdotes, geographical observations and literary references, Hazan´s walk guides us through an unknown Paris. He shows us how, through planning and modernisation, the city´s revolutionary past has been erased in order to enforce a reactionary future; but by walking and observation, he shows us how we can regain our knowledge of the radical past of the city of Robespierre, the Commune, Sartre and the May ´68 uprising. And by drawing on his own life story, as surgeon, publisher and social critic, Hazan vividly illustrates a radical life lived in the city of revolution.

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"Eric Hazan´s elegant, characteristically learned account of his journey through contemporary Paris, written in a tone both intimate and authoritative, is at once a companionably unhurried evocation of the city´s rich, radical past and-at a time when capital is dramatically reorganizing its topography-a bracingly urgent intervention in debates about the city´s future. As André Breton might have observed, there really are no lost steps here."
-Matthew Beaumont, author of Nightwalking

Praise for The Invention of Paris:

"This is a wondrous book, either to be read at home with a decent map, or carried about sur place through areas no tourists bother with."
-Adam Thorpe, Guardian

"Hazan is all business. He trudges through Paris street by street, quoting what Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire or Kafka said about a particular spot, pointing out where barricades were once erected and thieves gathered for drinks."
-Donald Morrison, Financial Times

"Hazan´s brick-by-brick account of the city´s history of strife and political posturing is riveting."
-Publishers Weekly

"Hazan wants to rescue individual moments from general forgetting and key sites from the bland homogenization of international city development; he is also a passionate left-wing historian seeking to rescue the truth of Paris´s revolutionary past."
-Julian Barnes, London Review of Books

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Eric Hazan is the founder of the publisher La Fabrique and the author of several books, including the highly acclaimed The Invention of Paris . He has lived in Paris, France, all his life.

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