After a beggar girl rescues the drunken, severely deformed French painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, he introduces her to his studio, the nightlife of Montmartre, and the cancan dancers at the Moulin Rouge club.

When and how did pop music earn so much cultural capital? This text investigates five key moments when popular music and avant-garde art transgressed the rigid boundaries separating high and low culture to form friendly alliances.

Illuminates the expatriate African American community of jazz musicians that thrived in the Montmartre district of Paris in the '20s and '30s and helped turn the "city of lights" into the major jazz capital it remains today.

An NYRB Classics Original When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note. The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.

Between the world wars, Paris welcomed not only a number of glamorous American expatriates, including Josephine Baker and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also a dynamic musical style emerging in the United States: jazz. Roaring through cabarets, music halls, and dance clubs, the upbeat, syncopated rhythms of jazz soon added to the allure of Paris as a center of international nightlife and cutting-edge modern culture. In Making Jazz French, Jeffrey H. Jackson examines not only how and why jazz became so widely performed in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s but also why it was so controversial. Drawing on memoirs, press accounts, and cultural criticism, Jackson uses the history of jazz in Paris to illuminate the challenges confounding French national identity during the interwar years. As he explains, many French people initially regarded jazz as alien because of its associations with America and Africa. Some reveled in its explosive energy and the exoticism of its racial connotations, while others saw it as a dangerous reversal of France’s most cherished notions of "civilization." At the same time, many French musicians, though not threatened by jazz as a musical style, feared their jobs would vanish with the arrival of American performers. By the 1930s, however, a core group of French fans, critics, and musicians had incorporated jazz into the French entertainment tradition. Today it is an integral part of Parisian musical performance. In showing how jazz became French, Jackson reveals some of the ways a musical form created in the United States became an international phenomenon and acquired new meanings unique to the places where it was heard and performed.

Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, now a policewoman, who's charged with shooting her partner Aimée Leduc is having a bad day. First, she comes home from work at her Paris detective agency to learn that her boyfriend is leaving her. She goes out for a drink with her friend Laure, a police officer, but Laure’s patrol partner, Jacques, interrupts, saying he needs to talk to Laure urgently. The two leave the bar, and when they don’t return, Aimée follows Laure’s path and finds her sprawled on a snowy rooftop, not far from Jacques, who is bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound. When the police arrive, they arrest Laure for murder. No one is interested in helping Aimée figure out the truth. As she chases down increasingly dangerous leads in the effort to free her friend, Aimée stumbles into a web of Corsican nationalists, separatists, gangsters, and artists. Could Jacques’s murder and Laure’s arrest be part of a much bigger cover-up? From the Trade Paperback edition.

Discover Paris with the most incisive and in-the-know guidebook on the market. Whether you plan to stroll along the Seine, sip apéritifs at classy left-bank cafés or browse modern art at the Palais de Tokyo, The Rough Guide to Paris will show you ideal places to sleep, eat, drink and shop along the way. Inside The Rough Guide to Paris - Independent, trusted reviews written in Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and insight, to help you get the most out of your visit, with options to suit every budget. - Full-colour maps throughout - navigate the medieval lanes of the Quartier Latin or the Marais's swanky shopping streets without needing to get online. - Stunning, inspirational images - Itineraries - carefully planned routes to help you organize your trip. - Detailed city coverage - whether in the city centre or out in the suburbs, this travel guide has in-depth practical advice for every step of the way. Areas covered: the islands; the Marais; the Quartier Latin; St-Germain; Montparnasse; Montmarte; Disneyland Paris. Attractions include: Eiffel Tower; Musée Rodin; Puces de St-Ouen; Pompidou Centre; Notre-Dame; Père-Lachaise; Musée Picasso; Musée d'Orsay; Fondation Louis Vuitton; Sainte-Chapelle; Berges de Seine; Place des Vosges. - Listings chapters - from accommodation to clubs and live music, plus festivals, events and Paris for children. - Basics - essential pre-departure practical information including getting there, local transport, the media, living in Paris, health, bike tours, boat trips, public holidays and more. - Background information - a Contexts chapter devoted to history and books, plus a handy language section and glossary. Make the Most of Your Time on Earth with the Rough Guide to Paris About Rough Guides: Escape the everyday with Rough Guides. We are a leading travel publisher known for our "tell it like it is" attitude, up-to-date content and great writing. Since 1982, we've published books covering more than 120 destinations around the globe, with an ever-growing series of ebooks, a range of beautiful, inspirational reference titles, and an award-winning website. We pride ourselves on our accurate, honest and informed travel guides.