Born in Paris, Agnes Poirier has lived and worked in London for the last twenty years, and writes in both English and French. Her work has appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Monde, The Guardian, The Times and The Independent on Sunday. She advises the Cannes Film Festival on British films and is currently a regular panel member of the British Broadcasting Corporation's Dateline London
"Carefully combing through an impressive amount of material,
Poirier assembles the history of a decade. . . .As Poirier hops
across arrondissements, she manages to create the feeling we're
peeking into the windows of her subjects, looking at buildings that
still stand, at inhabitants long gone." -The New York Times
"Poirier's hugely enjoyable, quick-witted, and richly anecdotal
book is magnifique." -The Times (London) "Weighty thought and
earthy behaviour are the twin engines behind Agnès Poirier's
briskly entertaining ride through France's most mouvementé decade."
-The Sunday Times (London) "Left Bank reads as an erudite and
deeply satisfying gossip column, in which each story is more
incredible than the last." -The New Republic "Poirier does not miss
a trick in her lively accounts of the intense discussions and
adulterous liaisons that centred on the Café de Flore or the nearby
nightclub Le Tabou; but her real achievement is to contextualise
these politically and culturally. . . .An entertaining and
well-written story" -The Spectator "Agnès Poirier's Left Bank is a
remarkably exhilarating read." -Literary Review (UK)
"[A] delightful account of the writers, artists and painters who
shared beds, cigarettes and column inches on a few streets in the
1940s" -The Economist "Sartre, along with his life-long paramour
Simone de Beauvoir, stands at the centre of Poirier's book. Around
this charismatic pair orbit the other stars in the Left Bank
constellation (writers, artists, models and musicians), in a series
of intellectual, political and erotic entanglements whose
internecine complexity the author unpicks with great relish and
flair." -The Financial Times "A detailed chronicle of a decade
alive with intellectual and political ferment. [Poirier] offers a
gossipy, well-informed cultural history of her native Paris,
beginning in 1938, with Europe on the brink of war, and ending in
1949, with the Marshall Plan in effect to help the continent
recover. Organizing the book chronologically, she follows the lives
of artists, writers, musicians, publishers, and performers--mostly
French and American--deftly creating "a collage of images, a
kaleidoscope of destinies" from memoirs, histories, biographies,
and the writers' own prolific work. . . . An animated, abundantly
populated history of dramatic times." -Kirkus "I loved this
dramatic reconstruction of the complicated and passionate life of
Left Bank intellectuals during the Nazi occupation and Poirier does
not shy away from exposing the joy and pain of experimental living
or from exploring with sensitivity the moral ambiguity of living
through the Occupation, especially complex for journalists and
writers. I found it compulsive reading as the book gathers momentum
with vivid descriptions of the post-war uncertainty." --Anne Sebba,
author of Les Parisiennes: Resistance, Collaboration, and the Women
of Paris Under Nazi Occupation
"A tour de force, Left Bank weaves together so many people, ideas,
trends, occurrences, and above all Parisian places, into a tapestry
of fascinations - a distillation of the essence of an amazing
time...the best of its kind I have ever read." --A.C. Grayling,
author of The God Argument "A brilliant recapturing of a
fascinating era. Artistic and intellectual Paris -- 1940-50 --
comes vividly and memorably alive in these pages. A tremendous
achievement". --William Boyd
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