The sixth floor is generally considered in Paris as the level where maids used to live, without the commodity of an elevator and in tiny rooms called “chambres de bonne”. Today, there are mostly students or newcomers who live there and often, still have to share the loo in the corridor. This is where Nathalie George, who was raised by … Read More
Joël Dicker is back, with a great Swiss novel…
On May 27, everyone will be able to discover the new Joël Dicker in French, in Spanish (on June 3) and in Italian, “L’Enigme de la chambre 622”. It was due to come out in March and the 300 000 copies have been patiently waiting in the Hachette warehouses to be distributed. I read it ahead and I loved it. … Read More
Woody Allen is back front stage with a surprising autobiography
“Apropos of Nothing” is the title of Woody Allen’s autobiography published on March 18 th in the US by Jeanette Seaver at Arcade books. In French it is translated as “Soit dit en passant” and will come out on June 3 rd at Editions Stock, an Hachette imprint. Both titles make the book sound like a modest account of a … Read More
More news from confinement
While Garrison Rousseau is happily having a drink by his pool on Mactan Island in Cebu, Nicky Vreeland, continues his recording in black and white of the Tibetan monastery in Southern India, which he runs and where he is confined. The Monastery is called Rato Dratsang and is located in Mundgod, in Karnataka. Nicky, the grand son of Vogue editor … Read More
A poem on Paris by Henri Cole
Born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1956, from a French-Armenian mother and an American father, Henri Cole has taught poetry at the University of Ohio, Harvard and Yale. He currently lives in Boston but teaches at Claremont McKenna college in California. He travels to Paris three or four times a year for a fortnight and this is where he likes to … Read More
News from around the world
The great advantage of this Pandemic (if any), is that everyone calls each other and speaks out. And the greatest news of the day is the publication on March 23 (yesterday) of Woody Allen’s Memoirs: “Apropos of Nothing”. I remember Woody announcing to me in 1987, that Mia was pregnant. He was stunned at the time because she had supposedly … Read More
Latest pleasures from Paris in these odd times
Hélène Rodocanachi was the anti heroin of the week. She could not go out and celebrate her 105 th birthday with children (Annick, Josselin and Olivier de Rohan) and stepchildren and was locked up in her retirement home in the Trocadero! This amazing lady lived through two World Wars with her first husband Duc de Rohan, an athlete and 80 … Read More
A new publishing house and an entertaining novel
To start a new publishing house in 2020 needs guts and this is what Philippine Cruse is proving today. At 42, she already has had a rich life. After an MA in Art history completed in Portland, Oregon, she passed her doctorate in French literature at the Sorbonne and went on to work in a bookstore, Alice, in Paris. In parallel, she … Read More