Paris Souls

In this book, reality always outdoes fiction and truth always outdoes myth. Get ready for a personal encounter with police inspectors and filles à la cuisse légère, Impressionists and art thieves, swindlers and bankers, poisoners and surgeons, collaborators and members of the resistance, Cubists and anarchists, painters' models and curators, terrorists and duellists, Huguenots and Catholics, criminals and executioners. In intriguing, often forgotten histories such as 'The Chanel versus Wertheimer', 'Lenin's Yellow Jersey' and 'Selling the Eiffel Tower', hundreds of Parisian souls are brought back to life behind the façades, in the passages, on the squares and along the avenues and boulevards of the City of Light

In Paris Souls, the reader samples the idiosyncratic harvest of someone who, after many seasons in his favourite city, still takes delight in its fruits. Author Dirk Velghe recounts facts and stories about the unusual people and events that have coloured Paris, sometimes with paint, sometimes with blood. Histories the way only a true Parisian can tell them. Light-hearted but always drawing on thorough research, Velghe gives a completely new twist to the history of Paris. His no-nonsense prose and narrative flair make for compelling reading.