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Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris (Audio CD) (Unabridged)
Parisians An Adventure History of Paris - Audio CD - Unabridged Author:Graham Robb, Simon Vance (Narrator) The secrets of the City of Light, revealed in the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten -- by the author of the acclaimed The Discovery of France. — This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction. — A young artillery ... more »lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter. An aristocratic woman, fleeing the Louvre, takes a wrong turn and loses her way in the nameless streets of the Left Bank. For want of a map—there were no reliable ones at the time -- Marie-Antoinette will go to the guillotine. Baudelaire, Baron Haussmann, the real-life Mimi of La Bohème, Proust, Charles de Gaulle (who is suspected of having faked an assassination attempt on himself in Notre Dame) -- these and many more are Robb’s cast of characters. The result is a resonant, intimate history with the power of a great novel. 16 pages of illustrations.
Narrator: Simon Vance. 11 audio discs (14.00 hr.)« less