Agnes Poirier - Böcker

'Rich and funny' Julian Barnes, Guardian'Poirier's hugely enjoyable, quick-witted and richly anecdotal book is magnifique' The TimesA captivating portrait of those who lived, loved, fought, played and flourished in Paris between 1940 and 1950 and whose intellectual and artistic output still influences us today.After the horrors of the Second World War, Paris was the place where the world's most original voices of the time came – among them Norman Mailer, Miles Davis, Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, Juliette Greco, Alberto Giacometti, Saul Bellow and Arthur Koestler. Fuelled by the elation of the Liberation, these pioneers hoped to find an alternative to the Capitalist and Communist models for life, art and politics – a Third Way.Agnès Poirier transports us to a time when Paris was at the heart of all that was new and brave and controversial, skilfully weaving together a collage of images and destinies.

The miraculous history of Notre Dame de Paris – its construction, near destructions and survival against all odds‘Vivid and engrossing… the opening chapter repays the cover price.’ ObserverWinner of The 2022 French Heritage Society Book AwardThe profound emotion felt around the world upon seeing images of Notre-Dame in flames opens up a series of questions: Why was everyone so deeply moved? Why does Notre-Dame so clearly crystallise what our civilisation is about? What makes ‘Our Lady of Paris’ the soul of a nation and a symbol of human achievement? What is it that speaks so directly to us today?In answer, Agnès Poirier turns to the defining moments in Notre-Dame’s history. Beginning with the laying of the corner stone in 1163, she recounts the conversion of Henri IV to Catholicism, the coronation of Napoleon, Victor Hugo’s nineteenth-century campaign to preserve the cathedral, Baron Haussmann’s clearing of the streets in front of it, the Liberation in 1944, the 1950s film of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, starring Gina Lollobrigida and Anthony Quinn, and the state funeral of Charles de Gaulle, before returning to the present.The conflict over Notre-Dame’s reconstruction promises to be fierce. Nothing short of a cultural war is already brewing between the wise and the daring, the sincere and the opportunist, historians and militants, the devout and secularists. It is here that Poirier reveals the deep malaise – gilet jaunes and all – at the heart of the France.