Paris

By EDWARD RUTHERFURD

Edward Rutherfurd will be in Auckland to speak next week – his Sunday session has sold out a second session has been made available: Friday 17 May 1-2pm. Details and how to buy tickets can be found here.

Published by Hachette New Zealand, 1 May 2013 $39.99 RRP

The epic novel of the most romantic city in the world.  City of love. City of splendour. City of dreams.

Inspired by the haunting, passionate story of the city of lights, this epic novel weaves a gripping tale of four families across the centuries: from the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne to the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction; from the Blanchards whose bourgeois respectability offers scant protection against scandal to the hard-working Gascons and their soaring ambitions.

Over hundreds of years, these four families are bound by forbidden loves and marriages of convenience; dogged by vengeance and murderous secrets; torn apart by the irreconcilable differences of birth and faith, and brought together by the tumultuous history of their city.

The story of Paris bursts to life in the intrigue, corruption and glory of its people. Beloved author Edward Rutherfurd illuminates Paris as only he can: capturing the romance and everyday drama of the men and women who, in two thousand years, transformed a humble trading post on the muddy banks of the Seine into the most celebrated city in the world.

About the Author

Edward Rutherfurd was born in England, in the cathedral city of Salisbury. Educated locally, and at the universities of Cambridge, and Stanford, California, he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983, and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge, and Salisbury.

Four years later, when Sarum was published, it became an instant international bestseller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he has written five more bestsellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London: The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum, two novels which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century, and New York in 2009.