Arcadia Books has now published a new edition of Lisa Appignanesi’s novel Paris Requiem:


Paris,1899. Capital of the crime passionnel. The city is electric with excitement…

Preparations for the universal exhibition and the dawn of a new century have hit fever pitch. But the sensual spectacle of the belle époque is overshadowed by racial and social tensions, as the Dreyfus affair unleashes a riotous surge of anti-semitism into its midst enters James Norton, an American charged with bringing home his brother Raf and their high-spirited sister Ellie. When the body of the beautiful Jewish woman Raf loves turns up in the Seine, and her sister is discovered in the sprawling Salpétrière asylum, the siblings are drawn into a dark web of violence, madness and death. As James reluctantly tackles his mission, it emerges that he and Paris share a history – one that is not altogether unlinked to the turbulent present that now confronts him.

Click here for a recent review of Paris Requiem in The Independent.

Appignanesi is also the author of several non-fiction books such as the acclaimed Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors, which inspired the new exhibition taking place at the Freud Museum this season.