Frequently hilarious, always surprising, Graham Robb's France combines the stylistic versatility of a novelist with the deep understanding of a scholar. The book creates a thrilling panorama of France from Gaulish and Roman times to the age of Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.
Robb's own adventures and discoveries while living, working, and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Some of the protagonists may be familiar, but in a very different light--Caesar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte, General de Gaulle.
This extraordinary narrative is the fruit of decades of research and 30,000 miles on a self-propelled, two-wheeled time machine (a bicycle). Even seasoned Francophiles will wonder if they really know that terra incognita on the edge of Europe that is currently referred to as "France."