The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris - Paperback

by Edmund White (Author), Alexander Chee (Foreword by)

Edmund White has just met you at a party and he's going to tell you about a friend. But his 'friend' is one of the greatest cities in the world, beloved by many and yet really known by only a few. And he is one of those few. -Alexander Chee

Edmund White's New York Times bestselling guided sojourn through the streets of Paris, with a new foreword by Alexander Chee.

Legendary paterfamilias of queer literature Edmund White lived in Paris for sixteen years, wandering the streets and avenues and quays of his favorite city. In The Flâneur he leads us on a walking tour of Paris' lush, sometimes prurient history, to parts of the city virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition celebrates the City of Light and the fearless wit and panache of one of its greatest devotees.

"A Paris you wouldn't otherwise see." -New York Times Book Review

Author Biography

Edmund White (1940-2025) authored more than thirty works of fiction, memoir, and nonfiction, including the novels A Boy's Own Story, Our Young Man, and The Humble Lover; the memoirs City Boy, Inside a Pearl, and The Unpunished Vice; literary biographies Genet and Rimbaud; and many more. His last work, the sexual autobiography The Loves of My Life, was a New York Times Editors' Choice. He received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. A contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewanee Review, and Best American Essays. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.