02 Oct 2018
In this episode of the Lovereading podcast they find echoes from the past catching up with the present in an in-depth interview with Sebastian Faulks. In his new novel Paris Echo, bestselling novelist Sebastian Faulks creates a surprising connection between two strangers in Paris.
Lovereading’s review of Paris Echo:
Classic stuff with Paris very much at its centre. Although set in the present, the past echoes through it as various people brush up against history, politics and atrocities.
Our main characters are a 19-year old, illegal, Moroccan immigrant, Tariq, and a lonely, middle-aged American academic, Hannah, bruised by a love affair in Paris ten years earlier. Tariq works in a fried chicken shop with a couple of Algerians who discuss the brutality of the French in the war of independence.
This echoes the interviews Hannah is transcribing for her research about women under German occupation. A quirk of fate allows Tariq to become Hannah’s lodger and then translator. Although a comparatively short book, at under three hundred pages, there is a huge amount within it. Faulks is without a doubt an impressive novelist. This is a must-read.
~ Sarah Broadhurst
Listen to the podcast here.
