In the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne explores the temptations of the French capital in a teasing study of foreign mores and Restif de la Bretonne provides an eye-witness account of the Revolution. From the 1800s, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola offer fascinating portraits of the city''s teeming humanity; the Goncourt brothers chronicle the explosion of artistic talent; Huysmans describes an evening at the Folies Berg-. Colette chronicles the pitfalls for a young girl in the decadent city of the early twentieth century; F. Scott Fitzgerald revels in the city''s glamour; Jean Rhys''s lost heroines wander from caf-o caf-James Baldwin celebrates its sexual freedoms; and Raymond Queneau gleefully reinvents the language of the street. In our time, Michel Tournier''s North African immigrant walks a camel along the boulevards, while Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano brilliantly maps the city''s many arrondissements. The alluring power of Paris has never dimmed and it is richly captured in
