Paris Top 10 : Historical Novels set in Paris – Top 10 Foreign Writers who Lived in Paris

1. Les Misérables

   The
   1862 novel by Victor Hugo (1802–85) is an all-too-vivid portrayal of
   the poor and the dispossessed in early 19th-century Paris. At its centre
   is the tale of nobleman Jean Valjean, unfairly victimized by an unjust
   system. The younger character of Marius is based around Hugo’s own
   experiences as an impoverished student.

   
   

   
   
   

   Plaque on Victor Hugo’s house

2. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

   Better
   known by its English title, which inspired a film of the same name,
   Victor Hugo’s Gothic novel was published in France in 1831 as Notre-Dame de Paris.
   Set in the Middle Ages, it tells the strange and moving story of a
   hunchback bell-ringer Quasimodo and his love for Esmeralda .

3. A Tale of Two Cities

   The
   finest chronicler of 19th-century London life, Charles Dickens
   (1812–70) chose to set his 1859 novel in London and Paris, against the
   background of the French Revolution . His description of conditions in the Bastille prison makes for grim reading.

4. Le Père Goriot

   Honoré de Balzac (1799– 1850) chronicled Paris life masterfully in his 80-volume La comédie humaine series, and this 1853 novel is certainly among the finest. Balzac’s house at 47 rue Raynouard in the 16th arrondissement, where he lived from 1840–47, is open to the public .

5. Sentimental Education

   Gustave
   Flaubert (1821–80) studied law in Paris but illness disrupted his
   chosen career and he devoted himself to literature. This work (L’education sentimentale in French), first published in 1870 in two volumes, stands alongside his greatest novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and marks the move from Romanticism to Realism in French literature.

6. Bel-Ami

   Guy
   de Maupassant (1850–93) published this, one of his best novels, in
   1885, criticizing the get-rich-quick Parisian business world of the belle époque (Beautiful Age). Maupassant is known as one of the world’s greatest short-story writers, and he is buried in the cemetery at Montparnasse.

7. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu

   The
   master work of Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was written in 13 volumes, the
   first novel appearing in 1913. Proust lived on boulevard Haussmann, and
   his epic tale is the fictionalized story of his own life, and of Paris
   during the belle époque. Proust is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in eastern Paris.

8. Nana

   Perhaps
   the greatest Parisian chronicler of them all, Emile Zola (1840–1902)
   was born, lived and died in the city, although he spent part of his
   youth in Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Nana
   was published in 1880 and tells a shocking tale of sexual decadence,
   through the eyes of the central character, a dancer and prostitute.

9. L’Assommoir

   Published in 1887, Zola’s L’Assommoir
   (The Drunkard) shows a side of Paris that many at the time would have
   preferred to ignore – the alcoholism of the working classes. It is one
   of the author’s series of 20 linked books known as the Rougon-Macquart sequence, which depict life in every quarter of society, through the eyes of two branches of the same family.

10. Thérèse Raquin

    Here
    Zola focuses on the secret passions that lurk behind a single Paris
    shopfront, opening up to reveal a tale of obsessive lust that ultimately
    leads to a brutal murder. It was published in 1867 and, only his second
    novel, shows the author’s astonishing maturity and unflinching
    examination of all aspects of 19th-century life.

Top 10 Foreign Writers who Lived in Paris