Taxi Tales From Paris is not your typical account of what happens when you move to another country. Nicky Gentil’s memoir offers the reader a truly original insight into life in the French capital because, as the title suggests, everything is seen through the prism of her most memorable taxi rides taken during the thirty years she has lived there.
An homage to the taxi driver in the age of Uber. Aimée de Jongh, one of the brightest new talents in Europe, creates her first autobiographic work, focusing on taxi rides from four cities: Los Angeles, Paris, Jakarta, and Washington, DC. Despite the stunning and detailed streetscapes she passes, de Jongh discovers she's more interested in the cab drivers than the view from the backseat. As the drivers slowly open up about their personal lives, de Jongh does too -- even when it means challenging her own ideas and prejudices. Through these vulnerable -- and often humorous -- moments, de Jongh finds common ground with the people driving her. TAXI is an ode to taxi drivers everywhere.
A best-selling modern masterpiece in the author's home country of Egypt, Taxi consists of fifty-eight fictional monologues with Cairo taxi drivers that have been recreated from the author's own experience, taking the reader on a roller-coaster of emotions as bumpy and noisy as the city's potholed and chaotic streets. Described as an urban sociology, an ethnography, a classic of oral history - and a work of poetry in motion - it tells Herculean tales of the struggle for survival and dignity among Greater Cairo's 80,000 cab drivers.
As any traveler knows, some of the best and most honest conversations take place during car rides. So, when a long-time NPR correspondent wanted to learn more about the real China, he started driving a cab--and discovered a country amid seismic political and economic change. China--America's most important competitor--is at a turning point. With economic growth slowing, Chinese people face inequality and uncertainty as their leaders tighten control at home and project power abroad. In this adventurous, original book, NPR correspondent Frank Langfitt describes how he created a free taxi service--offering rides in exchange for illuminating conversation--to go beyond the headlines and get to know a wide range of colorful, compelling characters representative of the new China. They include folks like "Beer," a slippery salesman who tries to sell Langfitt a used car; Rocky, a farm boy turned Shanghai lawyer; and Chen, who runs an underground Christian church and moves his family to America in search of a better, freer life. Blending unforgettable characters, evocative travel writing, and insightful political analysis, The Shanghai Free Taxi is a sharply observed and surprising book that will help readers make sense of the world's other superpower at this extraordinary moment.
If you've never been to Paris, here is your chance to experience it; if you have been there, here is your chance to return. Paris Tales is a highly evocative collection of stories by French and Francophone writers who have been inspired by the mystery and charm of different locations in this most visited of capital cities. The twenty-two stories-- by well-known writers including Nerval, Maupassant, Colette, and Echenoz-- provide a captivating glimpse into Parisian life from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. The stories take us on an atmospheric tour of the arrondissements and quartiers of Paris, charting the changing nature of the city and its inhabitants. Viewed through the eyes of characters such as the provincial lawyer's wife seeking excitement, a runaway schoolboy sleeping rough, and a lottery-winning policeman, the collection presents a stage for the intimacies and insights of these distinctly Parisian people. From the artists' haunts of Montmartre to the glamorous cafés of Saint-Germain, from the shouts of demonstrators on Boul Mich' to the tranquillity of Parc Monceau, Paris Tales offers a fascinating literary panorama of Paris. Illustrated with maps and striking photographs, the book will appeal to all those who wish to uncover the true heart of this seductive city. Translated by well-known linguist Helen Constantine, Paris Tales is the first title in a series of literary tours of key capital cities. Rich in atmosphere, this literary tour will enchant both tourists and armchair travelers alike.
Paris is one city that you should endeavor to know over the course of a lifetime, and not just in one or two visits. It is the center of the civilized universe, and it belongs to everyone—even to those who see it only in their dreams. The City of Light has bestowed on millions the gift of the incandescent present, an image or experience into which all life is condensed and reflected upon for years to come. Travelers’ Tales Paris captures the romance of the world’s favorite city through stories that entertain, inform, and touch the heart. John Gregory Dunne reveals the manic pleasures of driving in the city’s chaotic traffic. Joseph Diedrich and Katya Macklovich explore romantic encounters that could only happen here. Herbert Gold and David Applefield take aim at the nostalgia surrounding The Left Bank, one reveling in its literary past, the other urging the visitor to reach out to a new, modern Paris in the outlying area of Montreuil. Tim O’Reilly and Coleman Lollar evoke the appeal of unexpected tourist sites, and Marcel Laventurier recounts his harrowing escape from the Nazis on a train bound for occupied Paris in a tale you will never forget.
The most ambitious work of fiction by a writer widely considered the most important novelist working in China today In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds and false reports fly. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalizes paranoia and suspicion. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello or to ancestral homes that can only be reached underground through muddy caves, sewers, and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional Chinese herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets and transcendent delusions. Can Xue's masterful love stories for the new millennium trace love's many guises—satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling—against a kaleidoscopic backdrop drawn from East and West of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, sex and romance.
Documents the century-long transformation of Paris from a medieval center to the modern city that is recognized today, revealing how the Parisian urban model was actually invented in the 1700s when period leaders tore down fortifications, created public parks and constructed streets and bridges. 25,000 first printing.
