In January, after 12 people were killed at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Voltaire’s 18th-century Treatise on Tolerance topped bestseller charts in France. This isn’t the first time Parisians have turned to bookshops in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Copies of the memoir have been left among the tributes to the 129. It’s very important to see, many times, Hemingway’s book, A Moveable Feast, because we are a very ancient civilisation, and we will hold high the banner of our values, and we will show brotherhood to the five million Muslims who exercise their religion freely and kindly, and we will fight against the 10,000 barbarians who kill, they say, in the name of Allah,” she said. Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is currently No 1 on Amazon’s French site, where the retailer says it has temporarily sold out. “It’s very important to bring flowers to our dead. The demand for Hemingway’s memoir has also been fuelled by a much-shared interview with a Parisian woman named only as Danielle. It was always worth it and we received a return for whatever we brought to it. We always returned to it no matter who we were nor how it was changed nor with what difficulties now what ease, it could be reached. There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. Written towards the end of his life but only published posthumously, in 1964, A Moveable Feast sees the American author trace his impecunious time in Paris, surrounded by luminaries such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and James Joyce. This has seen Parisians drinking and eating in restaurants, cafes and bars across the city, and posting about it under the slogan “Je suis en terrasse” on social media. The book is published in French as Paris est une fête (Paris Is a Celebration), striking a chord with a mood of defiance in the wake of the attacks.

Usually, we sell between 6,000 and 8,000 copies a year.”ĭucreux added that Folio is already printing a further 20,000 copies of A Moveable Feast, with plans for a second reprint.Īt the Fnac in Saint-Lazare station, one vendor told Le Figaro that “in 24 hours, I’ve used up all of my stock and I’ve already ordered 40 more”. “We also received many orders from groups such as Fnac and Amazon, amounting to 8,500 copies. “There was a strong rise, with 1,600 books going out of our stocks,” said Folio’s David Ducreux.

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