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David Downie's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books David Downie recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of David Downie's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, en 2 volumes

Recommended by David Downie, and 1 others.

David DownieJacques Hillairet spent decades and decades writing about Paris. (Source)

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2

The Belly of Paris (Les Rougon-Macquart, #3)

Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese... more
Recommended by David Downie, and 1 others.

David DownieEmile Zola’s book is set largely at the Baltard Pavilions because the main character, Florent Quenu, winds up working with relations there. (Source)

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3
A selection of short stories reminding us of the inhumanities people practise on one another and of the inconclusive aspects of our destiny and how they can sometimes be mastered by acts of recognition.

This Faber & Faber edition contains both Gallant's previous collections Overhead in a Ballon and Home Truths in a single volume.
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Recommended by David Downie, and 1 others.

David DownieLike few writers I know, Gallant really penetrated the French mind. (Source)

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4
This unusual fictional memoir - in good part autobiographical - narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-outs of two great cities. The Parisian episode is fascinating for its expose of the kitchens of posh French restaurants, where the narrator works at the bottom of the culinary echelon as dishwasher, or plongeur. In London, while waiting for a job, he experiences the world of tramps, street people, and free lodging houses. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and of society. less

David DownieThat is a book I read when I was young – in my teens – and it really marked me. (Source)

Roman KrznaricOrwell is one of my great empathic heroes. He went tramping in east London, trying to empathise with people who lived on the social margins. (Source)

David KramaleyI really enjoyed Down and Out in Paris and London. I think it’s meant to be a semi-autobiographical novel by George Orwell. I liked it because it was one of those books that had a big influence on the way I perceive and think about the world. Highly recommended. (Source)

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5

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly... more

Neil Strauss[Neil Strauss recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans".] (Source)

Rachel KushnerThis novel taught me, early on, about hyperbole … I took it as a lesson and challenge, about description, accuracy, truth, and the powers of exaggeration to produce humour. (Source)

David DownieI was particularly fascinated by Céline’s portrait of the city because Paris is one of the characters in the book. You get a real sense of what Paris looked like. (Source)

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