Paris, When It's Naked

by Etel Adnan

Fiction. Etel Adnan's novel PARIS, WHEN IT'S NAKED amazes our retinas, ears, lips, fingertips, and noses with sensing, talking, and envisioning the city of Baudelaire and Delacroix, Mallarme and Picasso, Sartre and Djuna Barnes, Miller and Nin, Vietnamese and African refugees, revolutions and Bohemia. This tale of the Creative Now is told through the fine-tuned sensibility of Etel Adnan, the expatriate poet-painter who knows the French Capital as wholly as she does Beirut and San Francisco, her other homes. She is also the author of SITT MARIE-ROSE, an underground novel of the Lebanese Civil War, and many books of poetry. Her new work is a philosophically charged lyric in prose. The elan vital of every word evokes the eternal present of this wise woman. A highly personal, life-enhancing masterpiece in a deathly age of impersonality. An indespensable book by an indispensable writer -Morgan Gibson.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, France, Literature, Travel, Middle East, Lebanon

115 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1993

About the author

Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 1958–1972.

In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages.

In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent books are Night (2016) and Surge (2018). In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Numerous museums have presented solo exhibitions of Adnan’s work, including SFMoMA; Zentrum Paul Klee; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; Serpentine Galleries; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar.

Reviews

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

i come from very far within to the edge of my own body to meet the sunrise. bought at oslo's nord books; read in various cafes + restaurants in rainy paris <3

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A revelation: unexpected, poetic, funny, wise. Made me see my own city & everyday life in fresh, exciting new ways. Probably my favorite discovery of the year, & an instant favorite.

Just several weeks after I finished this the great Adnan, poet & painter, passed away at the age of 96. RIP.

[Cynthia-ël · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timeless piece that reminds us that human condition, migration, identity politics and class/race injustice are (unfortunately) perpetual. Etel Adnan is a political poet writing prose. This is a book to be read in small doses, ritualistically, somewhat of a bible – a handbook.

It's invigorating to read such smart subtext; in each chapter Etel Adnan goes through a beautiful evolution from weather to social weather, political weather, and emotional weather. and again. This book is especially recommended if you too, have moved from a country/city by the sea to another where the winters are dark, the skies are low and the people are cold. Paris when it's Naked is an homage to Paris in winter and a eulogy for lost places.

A patchwork thought from my bookclub: I will buy a handbag to carry the book in it, stop at moments of void or ennui, open at random a page: what will I ponder on today?

[Akosua Adasi]

I’m pretty sure it was raining when I started this book, and there was a pretty intense thunderstorm on the night (April 1st, 2023) that I picked it up again after leaving it aside for a while. I got through a lot of it sitting on a bench during said thunderstorm (under an awning) waiting for a table at Win Son, which felt like one of the best ways to sneak some hobby reading in. Makes me want to dive into all books that way, though whether it was the setting or the particular book, i’m not sure.

[Ella Roose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit was onverwachts eurocynisch, vol van politieke bespiegelingen en tegelijk toch ook een literaire koortsdroom. Annie Ernaux meets Marguerite Duras? Interessante inkijk in Parijs van de jaren ‘90

[ocelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

place-love syllabus ✅

[Alia JS · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was my best friend for the entire time i read it, & it lingers still in the most beautiful way.

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello??? Watta great short read???? Just vibes 🙂‍↕️🪽

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cataloged as Fiction, Paris, When It's Naked reads as memoir or meditation. Adnan's prose lies in close proximity to her poetry. There isn't a plot or any real action in this "story" of reading, walking & thinking. The narrator leaves her apartment in the 6th arrondisement of Paris to walk the streets, appreciate the architecture, gardens (especially the Luxembourg) & cafés (famous ones like La Flore & neighborhood ones familiar only to les gens du coin) of Paris, a city she describes in both elegiac and critical fashion. The narrator is both an outsider and an insider here. She comes from elsewhere (Lebanon) to take up residence (a lengthy but provisional one) in the city that is (and long has been) a magnet for expatriate artists, aesthetes, revolutionaries and seekers of all stripes from everywhere in the world. The particular historical moment in question here is circa 1990, when the map of Europe is redrawn upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany & the expansion of the European Union. The narrator is much preoccupied with Russia and with the potential transformation of nation states (& former empires) such as France into a new order called simply Europe (it is interesting to contemplate her mixed feelings about these changes from a perspective two decades later):

"But is Sicily European, really? Are we going to integrate these hot southern countries into our nordic economies? Will it rain more, down there, once Europe gives itself a common army? . . . . What if Russians bring their winters to the western parts of Europe? How are we going to get up in the sheer blackness of Sweden's mornings at the same hours as in Paris?"

She is sensitive to what she sees as France's retreat toward the the North, away from the Mediterranean, so to speak, which brings with it an exacerbated racism expressed as an anti-immigrant (particularly anti African & Mid Eastern immigrant) hyper nationalism.

"Paris is receding North as do its sister-cities of Berlin and Warsaw. Everything southern is kept at bay. We're at the beginning of some private ice-age, the somnolence of winter will conduct us into the northern fields of solitude, where we will forget the interplays of life and death and subsist in darkness, on very little, indeed, very very little."

Paris, When It's Naked is a lovely little book that I highly recommend to anyone interested in elegant writing & thinking &, of course, the City of Light herself.

I neglected to mention Adnan's humor. Anyone privy to French conversation will surely appreciate such comments as the following:
"If Paris stopped talking it would be after an atomic war, and even that's not a sure proposition."

[Brittany Tuttle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe that in all of my life nobody has told me about Etel Adnan, that I never heard her name while studying literature in college, that I could have gone all my life without reading her work had I not seen Paris, When It's Naked mentioned in an internet thread somewhere where someone had asked for recommendations of books with lovely prose. I'm astounded by the beauty of Adnan's prose, and the ideas contained within these pages, the timeliness of her concerns about creeping fascism in Europe and in the US, about the state of journalism, the societal fears over immigration and refugees, all written in the 1990s. Mostly I am enraptured by the way she writes about Paris, the city of my heart. I'm so glad this book found me.

[Restfulsimulation · Rating 5 out of 5]

etel reads the paper in paris, early 90s. muses about paris and some other stuff for 100 pages. etel adnan forever.

[Sarah Ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

i appreciate ethel adnan’s candor. i’ve read nothing like it.

[H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just how charming it is to be human being, to be morbidly romantic and to know the mortality of everything.

[Sofia Celeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely my favorite read of the year.

[ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ · Rating 2 out of 5]

She doesn't collect perceptions, she collects judgments.

[Bethan Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, sensory collage; each passage held such vivid imagery and it was a pleasure to read.

[Fatma Alfadhel · Rating 2 out of 5]

هذا الكتاب يحتاج للتركيز في قرائته ..,
فـأفكاره بعض مشوشة و غير متناسقة ...
و شخصية حول باريس و الحياة ;)

[Michael sinkofcabbages]

i really like this book. It seems to be the right book at the right moment. really makes me miss paris.

[Mills College Library]

Fiction A2389p 1993

[literarydoor · Rating 4 out of 5]

j'ai préféré Sitt Marie Rose mais Paris mis à nu est un très bel ouvrage de littérature !!