{"product_id":"9781800816503-secondhand-impossible-city-paris-in-the-twenty-first-century","title":"Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century","description":"'Kuper is a shrewd observer in this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology'  The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer's tale of a naif 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 have lived through a sequence of shocks: terrorist attacks, record floods and heatwaves, the burning of Notre Dame, the storming of the city by  gilets jaunes , and the pandemic. Now, as the Olympics come to town, France is busy executing the 'Grand Paris' project: the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs.  This is a captivating memoir of today's Paris without the cliches.","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48582839402715,"sku":"9781800816503-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/82a1122b-f8b2-4ee7-889a-169b7a3eced7_f862f0b6-3002-4098-90ca-1c37cc4c12bd.jpg?v=1775789186","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9781800816503-secondhand-impossible-city-paris-in-the-twenty-first-century","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}