Exiled in Paris

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Exiled in Paris is a 1994 (reprinted 2001) book by James Campbell, a Scottish cultural historian specialising in studies of the Beats and post-war Paris. He is the former editor of the Edinburgh Review and writes for the Times Literary Supplement. The book itself is a study of the Left Bank cafe society in post-war Paris, particularly the influence of American expatriates, as demonstrated by its sub-heading "Richard Wright, LOLITA, Boris Vian and others on the Left Bank 1946-1960".

The time frame of the book's scope, 1946-1960, mirrors that of Richard Wright's arrival in Paris from the US until his death. This begins with the arrival of Wright at Gertrude Stein's Paris apartment, effectively handing the baton over from the pre-war artist-led bohemian Paris of Stein, Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller to the more literary-focused cafe society. As the title suggests, it also covers Boris Vian and Nabokov. It ranges through the existentialism of Albert Camus, Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre, African American writers such as James Baldwin and Chester Himes, as well as Frantz Fanon and Sadegh Hedayat. The book also considers the operation run by Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press, particularly the contribution of Alexander Trocchi to its output and the influence of Trocchi's own Merlin, which included Samuel Beckett and Jean Paul Sartre as contributors. The book ends by assessing the arrival of the Beat Hotel on the scene, which saw the familiar ensemble of Beat writers including Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in Paris. The last vestige of this era can be found at Shakespeare and Company.