Impossible City
Paris in the Twenty-First Century
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
An entertaining and openhearted tale of a naïf eventually getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel society - at least a little.
When Simon Kuper left London for Paris in his early thirties, he wasn't planning to make a permanent move. Paris, however, had other
plans. Kuper has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, seen his American wife through life-threatening cancer, 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 their neighborhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change.
This century, it has globalized, gentrified, and been shocked into realizing its role as the crucible of civilizational 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 then 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 the Paris of today, without the Parisian clichés.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Present-day Paris isn’t the peppy fantasy world you see on shows like Emily In Paris, and journalist Simon Kuper is out to prove it in this memoir. In Impossible City, Kuper recounts his 20 years in Paris, dismissing the idea that “real” Parisians are bakers and cheesemongers. He’s celebrating the city’s modern multicultural soul, from Senegalese students at his kids’ school to Brits escaping southward in the wake of Brexit. Kuper captures Paris’ vibe through his own experience, moving there to escape expensive London before being slowly charmed into sticking around by French joie de vivre—yet he’s honest about the nightmarish parts of French life, from bureaucracy to rudeness. Kuper has a formidable eye for the bigger picture, too: He thoughtfully contemplates Paris’ future, analyzing whether turbocharged gentrification from the 2024 Olympics will starve the city of culture, making it a playground for the rich. For a true immersion into all facets of modern-day Paris, from terrorist threats to pushy French neighbors, dive into Impossible City.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Financial Times reporter Kuper (Chums), a self-professed "naive explorer" who moved to Paris 20-odd years ago, serves up an eclectic survey of the city's peculiarities and charms. Covering traditionally "French" topics, the author comments on Parisian fashion, flirtations, and such quotidian complaints as the city's bad traffic ("Parisians... should never have been allowed to drive"). On a more serious note, he interrogates the dark side of France's reputation for sexual permissiveness, recalling how the #MeToo movement gained traction in 2017 and 2018 but was opposed by some older women who pined for the "good old days" of so-called "sexual freedom." Elsewhere, he delves into a spate of antisemitic attacks in the 2000s and 2010s, though by and large praises the city's multiculturalism. In self-aware prose shot through with droll wit, Kuper renders Paris's triumphs and challenges alongside more mundane yet no less revealing moments (when his wife asks his building manager if his kids can play in the courtyard on weekends, she's told, "You are an American, so you do not understand, but what you want is unthinkable"—because, the author surmises, Paris is "for adults"). It's a loving and illuminating ode to the City of Light.
