Paris Noir  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Rue des maléfices, Chronique secrète d'une ville (previously published as Enchantements sur Paris, 1954 with Denoël) is a book by Jacques Yonnet. Its second edition was illustrated with photos by Robert Doisneau. On one of the covers was Robert Doisneau's photo, Rue de Lappe, décembre 1951.

The book was admired by the likes of Raymond Queneau, Jacques Audiberti, Jacques Prévert, Marcel Béalu and Claude Seignolle and published in English as Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City.

From the publisher:

In Paris Noir, Jaques Yonnet tells us about some of the darker quarters of Paris's Left Bank, centred on the Place Maubert and the Rue Mouffetard, as he experienced it. This book was mostly written during the 1940s, under the Occupation and in the immediate post-war period. There is a certain amount dealing with the resistance, but the main thrust of the book is a Paris that existed between the wars - and is well known from Film Noir - but has since disappeared. It concentrates on the people, a mixture of ordinary workers, tradesmen, artists, con men and criminals. It invests the area with a sense of mystery, including occasional supernatural events; its style is remarkable and Yonnet often draws on the language of the inhabitants of the area.

See also

• Paris Noir: African-Americans in the City of Light by Tyler Stovall