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City of Light, City of Shadows: Paris in the Belle Epoque
Mike Rapport
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Paris in the Belle Epoque is remembered as a golden age of cultural flourishing and political progress. The time between the revolutionary 1870s and the outbreak of war in 1914 saw the modern French capital take shape: by day Parisians could admire the rising Eiffel Tower and Sacre-Coeur Basilica, while at night they roamed the Bohemian world of the Moulin Rouge.
But as Mike Rapport reveals in this authoritative and beautifully written new history beneath its elegant veneer Paris was at war with itself. The Belle Epoque was also an era of social and religious unrest, women's emancipation and violent clashes over what it meant to be French.
Paris pulsated with the pleasures and anxieties of modernity: blazing electric lights illuminating the night, the first cars speeding down the boulevards, as well as the first Metro trains and plane flights. At the same time reactionary forces reasserted themselves-mostly dramatically in the infamous Dreyfus affair.
Told through the eyes of the greatest personalities of the age-novelist Emile Zola, feminist activist Marguerite Durand, Vietnamese diplomat Nguy?n Tr?ng H?p and socialist politician Jean Jaures-the book weaves together stories of splendour and suffering, delight and agony, offering a brilliant account of the shadows cast across the City of Light.
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Praise for City of Light, City of Shadows: Paris in the Belle Epoque
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For lovers of Paris this book should become indispensable - Julian Jackson, author of A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de GaulleMike Rapport is a historian with the rare ability to engage his reader both on the level of local detail and of sweeping narrative. City of Light, City of Shadows had me spellbound - Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse and Art MonstersThe buildings and boulevards of Paris come to life as [Rapport] describes them - Artemis Cooper, The SpectatorAs Mike Rapport makes clear in his splendid new book, the Belle Epoque was... a time of instability, upheaval and bitter division, in Paris and throughout France. - Munro Price, Literary ReviewMichael Rapport's fascinating new book looks at the city of light in the so-called Belle Epoque through the eyes of everyone from realist novelist Emile Zola to feminist and actress Marguerite Durand, showing the glittering triumphs of the age as well as the dark scandals. - The Irish TimesAn authoritative work... A strikingly rendered portrait of the era's fervent belief in progress - Kirkus Reviews
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