43 Captivating Books to Transport You to the Heart of Paris
PARIS – From Molière and Voltaire to Fitzgerald and Stein to Gopnik and Gavalda, the City of Lights brings out the writer in everyone. If you can't have Paris under your feet, you can have it in your imagination. Inspired by our Literary Tour of Paris itinerary, we've assembled a highly subjective list of fiction and non-fiction for readers of all ages.
Works of Fiction
Henry and June, Anaïs Nin
I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere, Anna Gavalda
Le Divorce, Diane Johnson
Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky
The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
Cousin Bette, Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo
The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
The Last Nude, Ellis Avery
Read more on Fathom: An excerpt; Ellis Avery walks in history's footsteps.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
You Deserve Nothing, Alexander Maksik
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir
The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Story of Babar, Jean de Brunhoff
The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
The Complete Guide to Asterix, René Goscinny
Non-Fiction
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
Between Meals, A. Liebling
Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
Chanel: A Woman of Her Own Means, Axel Madsen
My Life in France, Julia Child
Chéri, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Citizens:%20A%20Chronicle%20of%20the%20French%20Revolution
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
Eiffel's Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris's Beloved Monument and theExtraordinary World's Fair That Introduced It, Jill Jonnes
French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano
La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, Elaine Sciolino
Les Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans, Virginia Rounding
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, Judith Thurman
Tête-à-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Satre, Hazel Rowley
The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris, Edmund White
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier, Thad Carhart
Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, Diana Souhami
Wild Heart: Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey from Victorian America to the Literary Salons of Paris, Suzanne Rodriguez
Athénaïs: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France, Lisa Hilton
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A Literary Tour of Paris
Your Turn
Did we forget your favorite Paris book? Add it to the comments below.
Special thanks to Fathom contributor and Paris freak Kimberly Burns for her help assembling this list.
