Paris Interzone

Beginning with Richard Wright's meeting with Gertrude Stein in 1946 and ending with his death in suspicious circumstances fourteen years later, Paris Interzone provides a compelling look at the Left Bank café society that dominated postwar Paris. James Campbell writes about James Baldwin, Nabokov, Boris Vian, Maurice Girodias and reveals a multitude of strange tales: the resurrection of Samuel Beckett by a small Left Bank magazine; the truth about the scandalous best-seller The Story of O; and what happened when the Beat Generation came to Paris. Above all, Campbell celebrates the prevailing spirit of freedom in those years and the art it fostered. 'When on August 25, 1944, the allied forces marched into Paris and freed the city from Nazi occupation, they prepared the way for another invasion - a new wave of writers ... James Campbell has produced a riveting account of this post-war period in Paris Interzone.' Time Out 'Informative and exhilarating.' New York Times