'Kuper is a shrewd observer in this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology' The Sunday
TimesFrom the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer's tale of a naïf getting to
understand a complex glittering beautiful and often cruel city. Simon Kuper has experienced
Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there eaten the
croissants taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in
the city's notorious banlieues and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family's
neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself Kuper
has watched the city change. This century Paris has globalised gentrified and been shocked
into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational conflict. Sometimes it's a
multicultural paradise and sometimes it isn't. This decade Parisians have lived through a
sequence of shocks: terrorist attacks record floods and heatwaves the burning of Notre Dame
the storming of the city by gilets jaunes and the pandemic. Now as the Olympics come to town
France is busy executing the 'Grand Paris' project: the most serious attempt yet to knit
together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs. This is a captivating memoir of
today's Paris without the clichés.
