These Dividing Walls: Shortlisted for the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award

One Parisian summer
A building of separate lives
All that divides them will soon collapse...

In a forgotten corner of Paris stands a building.

Within its walls, people talk and kiss, laugh and cry; some are glad to sit alone, while others wish they did not. A woman with silver-blonde hair opens her bookshop downstairs, an old man feeds the sparrows on his windowsill, and a young mother wills the morning to hold itself at bay. Though each of their walls touches someone else's, the neighbours th...