PARIS DREAMBOOK - Hardcover

s in to a voodoo temple on the Boulevard de Clichy, the steam-wreathed inner sanctum of a Turkish bath and an apartment belonging to an ancient veteran of an S&M brothel that once served the blond conquerors of the German occupation.

Readers expecting the standard tourist cliches about the City of Light will be disappointed in this unusual travel guide. Using the literary device of an imaginary peasant, Osborne, author of Ania Malina ( LJ 6/15/87), explores a surreal, nightmarish Paris that few tourists ever encounter. In a sequence of dream-like essays, he offers his impressions of the city's bleak industrial suburbs, the red-light districts of Clichy and Saint-Denis, the exotic yet seedy Metro, and the Turkish baths hidden throughout the metropolis. This is not the Paris of the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysees but the Paris of prostitutes, graffiti artists, African and Arab immigrants, and decrepit French collaborators who still dream of their Nazi lovers. Like Jean-Luc Godard's films, this book is both fascinating and irritating. An acquired taste for sophisticated readers, this is recommended for larger travel collections.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.