American Writers in Paris

“Readers with a longstanding interest in expatriate writers in Europe between the world wars will find new considerations of Djuna Barnes, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Henry Miller in American Writers in Paris: Then and Now. But the further achievement of this collection of essays is in how it stretches the conversation back to include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James and forward through mystery novels and style guides and recent works that engage the Algerian diaspora and the AIDS crisis. This is a book about both the experience and influence of Paris on writers over parts of the past three centuries, but it makes great use of contemporary critical tools to thread through its pages considerations of how the English tongue and an American identity shaped writers’ engagements with Europe and, as well, how the French tongue and Paris itself shaped writers’ thoughts about the language in which they (mostly) still wrote and the country they (usually) still thought of as home.” Craig Monk, author of Writing the Lost Generation “Ferdâ Asya’s rich and varied compendium of great American authors in Paris begins with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James, includes such unexpected others as Grace King and William Faulkner, and continues to the present with Debra Ollivier and Jake Lamar. It deepens our understanding of these writers and adds to existing scholarship about their works.” Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce This book examines the works of American writers in Paris and explores the evolving interactions between these writers and French society from the 1800s to the present. It reveals a deepened understanding and an increased acceptance of different traditions and values, and shows a considerable cultural complexity, reflecting not only a transcontinental but also a global vision in the literature of these writers in the context of the City of Light. Ferdâ Asya is professor of English and she has taught at institutions of higher education nationally and internationally. She is the editor of American Writers in Europe: 1850 to the Present (2013) and Teaching Edith Wharton’s Major Novels and Short Fiction (2021).