The French have always loved to protest to strike to take to the streets in rebellion against
the state or the status quo. But in the last few years the level of anger and violence has
taken many by surprise and the atmosphere has changed. The voices of hostility are not only
from the extreme far-right but from the ordinary French who feel excluded from the closed
circle of wealth and privilege within the prospering cities. In this fascinating new book
Andrew Hussey travels the length of his adopted homeland to uncover the past and present of the
culture of the working class in France a culture invisible to most tourists and ignored by the
metropolitan classes. From the industrial north to the southern borders with Italy Hussey maps
the mood of a nation and reveals the social political and economic fault lines that may only
deepen and spread. Combining vivid travel narrative and sharp cultural analysis this will be a
compulsively readable and important book.
