Left Bank

A lively, authoritative group portrait of some of the 20th century's most revered creative minds as they lived, loved, fought, and flourished in Paris during and after World War IIIn this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant chapters, Agnes Poirier takes her readers through the lives of the poets, writers, artists, and politicians who converged in Paris between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human stories behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, from Richard Wright's Native Son to Albert Camus's The Stranger, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Surrealism and Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd. We follow James Joyce and Saul Bellow as young men, peek inside Picasso's studio, and trail the many twists in Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's epic, ever evolving love story. We watch the births and deaths of newspapers and...