Monday, March 29th, 2010 The Invention of Paris, a History in Footsteps

Description

A guide to Paris through art, literature and revolution. In The Invention of Paris, author and publisher Eric Hazan takes the reader on an exciting and historically rich tour through the construction of Paris, exploring the places and struggles that have marked its growth. Concentrating both on the literary and cultural representations of the city, as well as riots, rebellions and revolutions – throughout the nineteenth century and up until 1968 – Hazan acts as a guide who is simultaneously personal and rigorous in tone. Introducing us to characters as varied as Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Manet and Proust, Hazan charts the formation of a “Red Paris” through the sedimentation of acts and sources of insurgency, and gives us an unparalleled history of the barricade in the life of the city. The Invention of Paris opens a window on a Paris too often hidden beneath tourist kitsch and bourgeois.

Eric Hazan is an editor, translator, and the founder-director of the independent publishing house La Fabrique. Hazan was born in Paris in 1936. In 1970, he helped form the Franco-Palestinian Medical Association and served as a volunteer doctor in a refugee camp outside Beirut. In the eighties, he took over his father’s art house, Éditions Hazan, but after a deal with Hachette, he decided, in 1998, to set up the publishing house La Fabrique. Eric Hazan, “esprit libre”, still lives in Paris. He will be presenting in spring 2010 the translation of his book L’Invention de Paris (2002), published by Verso. He is also the author of Chronique de la guerre civile (2004) and Changement de Propriétaire: La guerre civile continue (2007).