An urgent and enthralling new novel about injustice and betrayal from the author of Birdsong and A Week in December.Set in 2006, Paris Echo follows Hannah, a thirty-one-year-old American post-doctoral researcher looking into the lives of women during the German Occupation of Paris in 1940-44, and Tariq, a nineteen-year-old boy who has run away from his home in Morocco, searching for sex and adventure. Through their culture clash we are taken back into the hidden Paris of the Dark Years, the Algerian War and the simmering discontents of the banlieue. As both main characters fight to preserve their integrity and their sanity, they find their future shaped by the lives of the dead, by the ghosts of the Paris Metro.
American history researcher Hannah travels to Paris as does Moroccan teenager Tariq. Hannah is writing a book chapter about women during the German occupation during WW II; Tariq is looking for evidence of his French-born mother who he barely remembers. Their paths cross in memorable ways.
Faulks’s writing is always also memorable with many literary references and unexpected storylines. My disadvantage was that I’m only an armchair French traveler, having only 'seen' Paris in books, and recognize little French language. I still really enjoyed reading this story, but would have been wonderful to know the sounds and smells of Tariq and Hannah's Métro journeys firsthand .
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Add a CommentDisappointing. I have loved every other Sebastian Faulks i have read, but didn't really feel a connection to Hannah or Tariq.
Once I found the flow of the book, and the purpose of its prose, I grew to love this book.
Mike Balogho
American history researcher Hannah travels to Paris as does Moroccan teenager Tariq. Hannah is writing a book chapter about women during the German occupation during WW II; Tariq is looking for evidence of his French-born mother who he barely remembers. Their paths cross in memorable ways.
Faulks’s writing is always also memorable with many literary references and unexpected storylines. My disadvantage was that I’m only an armchair French traveler, having only 'seen' Paris in books, and recognize little French language. I still really enjoyed reading this story, but would have been wonderful to know the sounds and smells of Tariq and Hannah's Métro journeys firsthand .