Haussmann: or, The Distinction

LaFarge’s stunning novel of love, betrayal, and exploitation is based on themes involving the life of the great city planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was the architect of modern Paris. In two decades, from 1853 to 1869, he transformed the cramped, filthy lanes of the medieval city into the airy boulevards and green parks of today. Yet there is a story that, on his deathbed, Haussmann wished to undo everything he’d built. “Would that it had died with me!” he is supposed to have said. What is the secret of the baron’s last regret?

To answer this question, author Paul LaFarge tells the story of a three-sided affair that pitted love against ambition and architecture against flesh, in this sweeping drama of a changing social order.