City of Light, City of Shadows

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

Paris in the Belle Epoque is remembered as a golden age of cultural flourishing and political progress. The time between the revolutionary 1870s and the outbreak of war in 1914 saw the modern French capital take shape: by day Parisians could admire the rising Eiffel Tower and Sacre-Coeur Basilica, while at night they roamed the Bohemian world of the Moulin Rouge.

But as Mike Rapport reveals in this authoritative and beautifully written new history beneath its elegant veneer Paris was at war with itself. The Belle Epoque was also an era of social and religious unrest, women's emancipation and violent clashes over what it meant to be French.

Paris pulsated with the pleasures and anxieties of modernity: blazing electric lights illuminating the night, the first cars speeding down the boulevards, as well as the first Metro trains and plane flights. At the same time reactionary forces reasserted themselves-mostly dramatically in the infamous Dreyfus affair.

Told through the eyes of the greatest personalities of the age-novelist Emile Zola, feminist activist Marguerite Durand, Vietnamese diplomat Nguy?n Tr?ng H?p and socialist politician Jean Jaures-the book weaves together stories of splendour and suffering, delight and agony, offering a brilliant account of the shadows cast across the City of Light.

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Paperback / softback
ISBN13: 9780349128146
Published: May 2025

Number of pages: 448
Width: 126 mm
Height: 196 mm
Depth: 38 mm

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group