The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps
Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur’s ear for a story with a historian’s command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists—Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, and Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval and Rousseau.
It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted and vitalized by the history of the barricades, which Hazan retells in rich detail. The Invention of Paris opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital’s vibrant and bloody past, revealing the city in striking new colors.
Paperback, 400 pages
ISBN: 9781844677054
June 2011
$19.95 / £9.99 / $25.00CAN
Reviews
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[Hazan] stalks the capital, fulminating about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' artistic and political rebellions.
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Detailed, passionate ... Any visit to [Paris] would be made richer by taking the time to read Hazan's book.
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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.
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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.
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Amid the intellectual murkiness of the European scene, a few bright flames are burning: as witness the work of Eric Hazan.
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[F]ew will be able to resist... Hazan's brick-by-brick account of the city's history of strife and political posturing is riveting.
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Do you want to be happy? Buy this book and take a stroll.
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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.
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One of the greatest books about the city anyone has written in decades, towering over a crowded field, passionate and lyrical and sweeping and immediate.
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This book is both a political and aesthetic delight, uncovering the real mysteries of Paris.
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With its astonishing breadth of reference and incredible detail, this is a must for all lovers of Paris.
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[A] stunning book.
Blog
Verso's guide to political walking
Inspired by Patrick Keiller's The Robinson Institute, currently on show at the Tate Britain, we present Verso's guide to political walking. We also draw influence from Will Self's Guardian article in which he pronounces that "walking is political" and suggests that the "contemporary flâneur" can be one "who seeks equality of access, freedom of movement and the dissolution of corporate and state control."
1. Wanderlust - Rebecca Solnit
The first general history of walking, Rebecca Solnit's book finds a profound relationship between walking and thinking, walking and culture, and argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in an ever more automobile-dependent and accelerated world.
2. Savage Messiah - Laura Oldfield Ford
Savage Messiah collects Laura Oldfield Ford's black and white, cut 'n' paste, punk fanzines that document her drift through London's margins. Illustrated with haunting line drawings of forgotten people and places, Oldfield Ford records the beauty and anger at the city's edges.
“Beyond the Barricades”— The City and the New Protest Movements
Michael Sayeau, contributor to Restless Cities, has written on the changing forms of demonstration across the world today for Frieze. Sayeau considers the various methods employed by groups such as UKUncut, the August rioters, Greek rioters and Arab Spring revolutions, and in turn sheds light on the Occupy movement. Sayeau draws inspiration for his enquiry from Eric Hazan's The Invention of Paris, a vibrant tour through the revolutionary past of the streets of Paris, a city shaped by the history of the barricades:
Hazan argues that the barricades - emblematic of both the practicalities and the romance of Parisian protest and a persistent symbol of civic unrest - were products of their time in all of its social, technological and political aspects. In a story that most of us are familiar with, their emergence and persistence sparked a reactionary revolution in urban planning and architecture, which to this day defines many of our modern cities.
But in recent months, as a wave of civic protest has washed over the world from Athens to Syria and from Spain to Egypt, a strange reversal has taken place in the practices of urban demonstrations - a reversal that suggests that nearly two centuries' worth of protest tactics and policing strategies are undergoing a paradigm shift.
Bookslut illuminates City of Light’s insurrectionary past in a review of The Invention of Paris
A few short weeks ago, Bookslut reviewer Angela Meyer praised The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps by historian Eric Hazan for enabling her to "place [herself] not just topographically but, temporally" in Paris. Just published, the new paperback edition of The Invention of Paris includes new maps, fresh images and an updated introduction by the author. What could be a better companion for a radical walking tour of La Ville-Lumière?
With Hazan's insights to guide her, Angela Meyer uncovers the revolutionary narratives of the Boulevard Montmartre, Rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre, right and left bank, and old quarters on a recent trip to Paris:
I didn't know much about the French Revolution and the ongoing struggles. The section on Red Paris is spirited and moving. So many names, so much blood and such continual resistance.