Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City

In ‘Paris Noir’, Jacques Yonnet tells us about some of the darker quarters of Paris’s Left Bank, centred on the place Mauberge and the rue Mouffetard, as he experienced it.
This book was mostly written during the 1940s, under the Occupation and in the immediate post-war period. There is a certain amount dealing with the resistance, but the main thrust of the book is a Paris that existed between the wars – and is well known from Film Noir – but has since disappeared. It concentrates on the people, a mixture of ordinary workers, tradesmen, artists, con men and criminals.
It invests the area with a sense of mystery, including occasional supernatural events; its style is remarkable and Yonnet often draws on the language of the inhabitants of the area.