Temperatures will continue to fall over the next few days

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

 tackles your book questions, big and small. Ask 

This week's question: What book became a bestseller in the wake of the attacks in Paris?

Ernest Hemingway's Paris memoir, "A Moveable Feast," shot to the top of the bestseller list on Amazon's French site after the 

. Several bookstores around the city also reported a spike in sales.

The memoir covers the years Hemingway spent in France during the 1920s, rubbing shoulders and sipping cocktails with the likes of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others. 

The book's French title — "Paris est une fête" — translates as "Paris is a party."  The phrase comes from Hemingway's ode to the city. 

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man," he wrote, "Then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

, "paperback versions are being deposited, along with flowers and candles, in front of bullet-ridden windows at one of the Paris bars targeted by the jihadist gunmen."

 that as many as 8,500 copies had been ordered in the last week — more than they usually sell in an entire year. 

The Guardian says the title — "Paris is a party" — has struck "a chord with a mood of defiance in the wake of the attacks."

The coordinated shootings and suicide bombings are the second time the city has been shaken by terrorist violence this year. In January, 12 people were killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine. 

It was recently announced that Charlie Hebdo's editor-in-chief, Stephane Charbonnier, finished his memoirs just two days before he was killed in the attack. Charbonnier's book, "Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia and the True Enemies of Free Expression," will be published in January.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Tracy Mumford

Author

Ernest Hemingway's Paris memoir, "A Moveable Feast," shot to the top of the bestseller list in France. Many copies have been left, along with flowers and signs, at the sites of the attacks.

Why Hemingway became a bestseller after the Paris attacks

Go Deeper.

Like this?