Exploring shadows in the City of Light

HISTORY: Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris By Graham Robb Picador, 462pp, £18.99

AS THE title indicates, Graham Robb’s new history of Paris places the people of the city at the heart of his book. The point of departure for the volume is the French Revolution and its terminus occurs in the recent past.

Along the way, Robb has his readers dismount at 18 chronologically ordered temporal stops, introducing us to a human comedy of characters as diverse as Queen Marie-Antoinette, the 19th-century police archivist Jacques Peuchet (whose notes inspired The Count of Monte-Cristo), Marcel Proust and the singer Juliette Greco.

Like Charles-Axel Guillaumot, the architect who saved Paris by propping up and consolidating underground galleries, Graham Robb plunges us into the bowels of the city, uncovering layers of history and bringing us face to face with the unexpected along the way. He is attentive to the back stories and the back streets, giving us a history that is both subterranean and subaltern, revealing for example the stoic nature of Madame Zola, wife of the great novelist, who despite her husband's founding a family with a younger woman, continued to encourage and nurture his career. He brings us through the stately doors of the city's portes cochères, unveiling the hidden courtyards and the intrigues that lie behind them. He leads us to the Île St Louis and introduces us to President Georges Pompidou and his plans for urban modernity. He also regales us with tales of Pompidou's presidential confrères, Presidents Mitterand and de Gaulle, placing the stories of the attempted assassinations on them back to back in a chapter that has all the ingredients of a noir-ish whodunit.

Robb also reveals some of the more disturbing facets of the city's history. In a moving chapter which deals with Paris at the time of the Occupation, he recounts the story of unknown Jewish children whose lives would be changed for ever after the Rafle du Vel d'hiv, the raids that led to the deportation of thousands of Parisian Jews. In this chapter, Robb's writing echoes that of Patrick Modiano, the novelist chronicler of anonymous Jewish destinies. And this is the great strength of Robb's book. His style blends with the demands of the era in question and teasingly keeps the reader guessing at the beginning of each chapter as to the identity of the protagonists. In some instances, the adventure story format lends itself to a detective-fiction style of writing that wouldn't be out of place in the work of Fred Vargas, (and like Vargas, Robb has the same love of Parisian monuments and street names: witness his ode to rue Croulebarbe – Crumblebeard Street). The chapter on Juliette Greco and Saint-Germain-des-Prés is written in the style of a film script, while that on the 1968 student revolt is playfully penned in the style of a student handout, complete with translated slogans ( Soyez réalistes: demandez l'impossible– Be realistic: ask for the impossible), questions and sample answers.

Robb is also attentive to present-day political preoccupations. His chapter entitled “Sarko, Bouna and Zyed” reminds us of the images of Paris that were flashed across television screens in the wake of the riots following Bouna and Zyed’s deaths in October 2005. This is a Paris that some of those who live within the walls of the city refuse to acknowledge as being part of its fabric: anything beyond the périphérique (the Paris ring-road) is beyond the pale.

Robb highlights the physical dislocation of the banlieue (as Ruadhán MacCormaic did in an article in this newspaper on Clichy-sous-Bois), the trek in the RER and the voyage in the 601 bus before one reaches the cité which was home to those youths. Yet, as Robb points out, this 2005 revolt can be seen as being in keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the faubourgs of old. Viewed from this perspective, Parisian traditions were upheld by the inhabitants of the housing projects.

Robb’s final chapter and its uncharted mountain, which he dubs the North Col, is a reminder that the geography of Paris changes constantly under the impetus of historical forces. Change it may again under the terms of “Le Grand Paris”, President Sarkozy’s vision for a Parisian metropolis with international architects designing ambitious new pluridisciplinary projects. The defeat of the presidential majority in the recent regional elections may threaten those plans.

We all have our favourite Parisians though, and so we can feel peeved at the absence of people such as Sarah Bernhardt, Simone Veil or Walter Benjamin (and Robb's definition of the term means all of those cited qualify). However, the introduction makes clear that this is a personal history and a range of individual choices. It encourages us to draw up our own lists (Anelka, Berthillon, Chanel?). Armed with Parisians: An Adventure Story, its detailed chronology and sources, we come away with a better understanding of Paris. Carry it with you and it can help you feel a little more Parisian (even if your ancestors haven't lived in the City of Light for three generations).

Clíona Ní Ríordáin teaches Irish Studies at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle