The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris

Introducing The Writer and the City, an occasional series in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the city they know best. Beautifully produced, pocket-sized books will provide exactly what is missing in ordinary travel guides.

A flâneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. Edmund White, who lived in Paris f...