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The 19 Best Novels Set in Paris

By YPB Team

Nineteenth-century Paris and expatriate Paris share one bracket, plus a memoir or two that read like fiction.

  1. A Moveable Feast — ranked #11
    A Moveable Feast
    Hemingway's posthumous account of his poor, productive 1920s in Paris, and of the friends he later filleted in print.
    1000pts
  2. Perfume — ranked #22
    Perfume
    Patrick Süskind's 1985 novel of a scentless murderer born in the stink of eighteenth-century Paris.
    756pts
  3. The Three Musketeers — ranked #33
    The Three Musketeers
    Dumas's 1844 adventure of d'Artagnan arriving in Paris to join the king's guard.
    664pts
  4. Sentimental Education — ranked #44
    Sentimental Education
    Flaubert's 1869 novel of Frédéric Moreau drifting through Paris and the 1848 revolution.
    596pts
  5. A Tale of Two Cities — ranked #55
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Dickens's 1859 novel of the Revolution, split between London and a Paris of tribunals and the guillotine.
    596pts
  6. The Elegance of the Hedgehog — ranked #66
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    Muriel Barbery's 2006 novel of a concierge and a clever girl in a rue de Grenelle building.
    596pts
  7. Les Misérables — ranked #77
    Les Misérables
    Hugo's 1862 epic of Jean Valjean, the barricades and the Paris sewers.
    517pts
  8. Bel-Ami — ranked #88
    Bel-Ami
    Maupassant's 1885 novel of a penniless ex-soldier climbing Paris journalism through women.
    517pts
  9. Tender Is the Night — ranked #99
    Tender Is the Night
    Fitzgerald's 1934 novel of an American psychiatrist unravelling between Paris and the Riviera.
    517pts
  10. Tropic of Cancer — ranked #1010
    Tropic of Cancer
    Henry Miller's 1934 autobiographical novel of hunger and appetite in expatriate Paris, banned in the US for decades.
    517pts
  11. The Sun Also Rises — ranked #1111
    The Sun Also Rises
    Hemingway's 1926 debut, which starts in the Left Bank cafés before the run to Pamplona.
    517pts
  12. The Phantom of the Opera — ranked #1212
    The Phantom of the Opera
    Leroux's 1910 gothic mystery beneath and above the Palais Garnier.
    423pts
  13. The Count of Monte Cristo — ranked #1313
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    Dumas's 1844 revenge novel, whose long second half plays out in Parisian salons.
    423pts
  14. Nana — ranked #1414
    Nana
    Zola's 1880 novel of a theatre actress who ruins the men of the Second Empire.
    423pts
  15. Suite Française — ranked #1515
    Suite Française
    Irène Némirovsky's novel of the 1940 exodus and occupation, published sixty years after she died at Auschwitz.
    310pts
  16. Giovanni's Room — ranked #1616
    Giovanni's Room
    James Baldwin's 1956 novel of an American in Paris who cannot admit what he wants.
    310pts
  17. Down and Out in Paris and London — ranked #1717
    Down and Out in Paris and London
    Orwell's 1933 account of dishwashing in Paris hotel kitchens and sleeping rough.
    310pts
  18. Le Père Goriot — ranked #1818
    Le Père Goriot
    Balzac's 1835 boarding-house novel, where young Rastignac learns what Paris costs.
    172pts
  19. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame — ranked #1919
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    Hugo's 1831 novel of Quasimodo and Esmeralda, written partly to save the cathedral itself.
    172pts

#books87#france38#classics474#paris1

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