Impossible City

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024A Waterstones Best History Book of 2024 Pick ''Kuper is a shrewd observer [in] this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology'' The Sunday TimesFrom the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer''s tale of a naïf getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city. Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city''s notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family''s neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change. This century, Paris has globalised, gentrified, and been shocked into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational conflict. Sometimes it''s a multicultural paradise, and sometimes it isn''t. This decade, Parisians