Books set in Paris, France

France — Paris

2016
Lullaby
Leïla Slimani · novel · 2016
A Paris couple hires the perfect nanny; the first page tells you how it ends.
2015
Vernon Subutex 1
Virginie Despentes · novel · 2015
Evicted, a former record-shop owner drifts from sofa to sofa across today’s Paris.
2015
Submission
Michel Houellebecq · novel · 2015
A jaded Sorbonne professor watches Paris change after an Islamic party wins power.
2010
The Invisible Bridge
Julie Orringer · novel · 2010
1937–45: a Hungarian Jewish student between Paris and wartime Budapest.
2010
The Hare with Amber Eyes
Edmund de Waal · memoir · 2010
1870s to today: a family’s netsuke pass from Paris to a Vienna palace and the Nazis.
2006
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery · novel · 2006
In a grand Paris apartment building, a concierge and a gifted girl hide their inner lives.
2004
Suite Française
Irène Némirovsky · novel · 2004
June 1940: Parisians flee the advancing German army, and the city empties.
1978
Missing Person
Patrick Modiano · novel · 1978
A detective who has lost his memory searches the streets of Paris for his own past.
1964
A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway · memoir · 1964
1920s: young, poor and happy in Hemingway’s Paris of cafés and writers.
1959
Zazie in the Metro
Raymond Queneau · novel · 1959
A foul-mouthed girl gets two days in Paris, and the metro is on strike.
1957
Second Thoughts
Michel Butor · novel · 1957
Twenty hours on the Paris–Rome train, as a man rethinks leaving his wife.
1933
Down and Out in Paris and London
George Orwell · memoir · 1933
Orwell washes dishes in Paris hotel kitchens, then tramps across London.
1928
Nadja
André Breton · novel · 1928
Breton wanders Paris after a mysterious young woman he met by chance in the street.
1873
The Belly of Paris
Émile Zola · novel · 1873
1858: Les Halles, the vast new food market, as a stage for hunger and plenty.
1869
Paris Spleen
Charles Baudelaire · poetry · 1869
Prose poems of the modern city: crowds, cafés, windows and strangers.
1862
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo · novel · 1862
1815–1832: from the sewers to the barricades, the Paris of the poor.
1835
Father Goriot
Honoré de Balzac · novel · 1835
1819: in a shabby Latin Quarter boarding house, a young man learns what Paris costs.