Impossible City

Paris in the Twenty-First Century

By: Simon Kuper

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Paperback | 6 February 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
272 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.4 x 13.0

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$30.99

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An unsparing memoir of the city in the twenty-first century, from a long-time Parisien d'adoption

'Kuper is a shrewd observer in this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology' The Sunday Times

From the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer's tale of a naïf getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city.

Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, 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 his family's neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change.

This century, Paris has globalised, gentrified, and been shocked into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational 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 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 today's Paris without the cliches.

Industry Reviews

'A portrait of Parisian society ... the style is elegant and flinty, the humour dry' - Andrew Martin
'[A] revealing memoir ... Kuper is a clear-eyed observer of all the history that is happening all around him ...for all the transformations of the past two decades, however, Kuper is always alert to the city's particularity' - Observer
'Highly readable and amusing prose ... Kuper is a charming guide, with a particularly good eye for the telling quote' - New Statesman

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