Overview

In this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant eras, Agnès Poirier unspools the stories of the poets, writers, painters, and philosophers whose lives collided to extraordinary effect between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human drama behind some of the most celebrated works of the twentieth century, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd, New Journalism, bebop, and French feminism. We follow Arthur Koestler and Norman Mailer as young men, peek inside Picasso's studio, and trail the twists of Camus's, Sartre's, and Beauvoir's epic love stories. We witness the births and deaths of newspapers and literary journals and peer through keyholes to see the first kisses and last nights of many ill-advised bedfellows. At every turn, Poirier deftly hones in on the most compelling and colorful history. She brings to life the flawed, visionary Parisians who fell in love and out of it, who infuriated and inspired one another, all while reconfiguring the world's political, intellectual, and creative landscapes. With its balance of clear-eyed historical narrative and irresistible anecdotal charm, Left Bank transports listeners to a Paris teeming with passion, drama, and life.

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9781665121347

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Christa Lewis, winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards, is a classically trained actress and a graduate of Boston University's four-year conservatory training program. She has worked full time at the microphone since getting her start as a newsreader for an international news broadcaster and now narrates audiobooks full time. Born in Paris, Agnes Poirier has lived and worked in London for the last twenty years, and writes in both English and French. Her work has appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Monde, the Guardian, the Times, and the Independent on Sunday. She advises the Cannes Film Festival on British films and is currently a regular panel member of the British Broadcasting Corporation's Dateline London.

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