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Shop nowHaussmann
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Learn moreLaFarge’s stunning novel of love, betrayal, and exploitation is based on themes involving the life of the great city planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann.
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was the architect of modern Paris. In two decades, from 1853 to 1869, he transformed the cramped, filthy lanes of the medieval city into the airy boulevards and green parks of today. Yet there is a story that, on his deathbed, Haussmann wished to undo everything he’d built. “Would that it had died with me!” he is supposed to have said. What is the secret of the baron’s last regret?
To answer this question, author Paul LaFarge tells the story of a three-sided affair that pitted love against ambition and architecture against flesh, in this sweeping drama of a changing social order.
Paul LaFarge is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Artist of the Missing. He lives in San Francisco.
Erik Bauersfeld is a voice actor whose credits include A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
Reviews
“LaFarge is a master storyteller with cleverness and inventiveness to spare…[An] ambitious and playful novel…full of artful prose, wit, and provocative ideas.”
“With his dazzling gift for bringing irretrievable cities to life, LaFarge conjures sinous, melancholic otherworlds that feel wholly tangible.”
“Imaginative…compelling storytelling…we can’t help reading on.”
“LaFarge is a confident, tireless trickster and yarn spinner…a magician on the scale of Prospero.”
“LaFarge…neatly integrates geographical and cultural references into the tale, making this as much an enlightening history of Paris as it is a tragic, affecting love story. An astonishing amount of research, a believable tone, and a captivating story all come together to make this work a stunning success.”
“[Haussman’s] fascinating lifestyle and the passions from which he patterned his life are given a sensitive understanding by Eric Bauersfeld. He reads with the subtlety of one who is standing in for the author, but indeed he gives full color to the story. As his voice and manner offer the sound of the Old World, he takes us through the upheaval of a changing social order—and we enjoy the sound of it.”
“Lavishingly imagined…The tensions among duty, artifice, and passion are vividly played out in a superbly realized period setting.”
“LaFarge peers into the souls of his characters and the Parisians in general, dropping pearls of philosophy to explain the tenor of their lives. Bauersfeld narrates with a mellow old man’s voice tuned to the emotional lives of his quirky characters. Poetical French personal and place names trip smoothly from his tongue.”
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