Parisian Portraits
Contents: Foreword. 1. Nostalgia improves with the passage of time. 2. Yesteryears. 3. Countdown to year 2000. 4. ‘This was the year 2000—the Paris of Utopias. 5. ‘And God created the French’/Louis—Bernard Robitaille. 6. Living in the ’16. 7. Speaking Francais. 8. ‘Down by the Seine with me’. 9. Les Champs-Elysees: yesterday and today. 10. Homage to perfume. 11. Travelling through time. 12. Sorbonne and its soul. 13. Mementoes of montmartre. 14. ‘Thomas Jefferson in Paris’/Howard C. Rice. 15. ‘The crazy years: Paris in the twenties/William Wiser. 16. ‘A moveable feast/Ernest Hemingway. 17. Paris in the fifties/Stanley Karnow. 18. An Anglo-American Francophile. 19. Death of a princess. 20. Windsor windfall. 21. Two historical auctions. 22. How to ‘Do’ the Louvre in forty-five minutes. 23. A little known gem. 24. Close encounters of an Egyptian kind. 25. Egyptomania. 26. Stadium of France. 27. Extra-terrestrial extravaganza. 28. Agony and ecstasy. 29. ‘Le testament Francais/Andrei Makine. 30. ‘Paris in August/Adrian George. 31. I’ll always have Paris: a memoir/Art Buchwald. Last month. A Bientot Paris. Love affair. Books consulted. Index.
"Paris is a feeling and not a city. It is un cri de Coeur a call of the heart. ‘Parisian Portraits’ exemplifies the aphorism—plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose the more it changes, the more it is the same. Raana Haider explores the yesterday, today and tomorrow of the most beautiful city in the world. In the city of lights, she is charmed by the Arc de Triomphe, the Bois de Boulogne, the Champs-Elysees. However, she also covers art and auctions; baguettes and bistrots; cafes and Chanel; Diana and Duke and Duchess of Windsor; émigrés and Egyptomania; mega-Louvre and mini-museums and the feather in the national cap—the World Cup 1998. The abundance of superlative on Paris bears witness to the scores of its admirers through the ages—Parisians who have crossed national boundaries—Parisians not by birth but by choice. ‘Parisian Portraits is also the Paris of the American Art Buchwald, the English Charles Dickens, the Hungarian George Mikes, the Russian Andrei Makine and any number of other Parisians by inclination." (jacket)
