Paris Was Us by Andreu Claret

Paris was us
by Andreu Claret

Paris Was Us tells the extraordinary life of a son of farmers, exiled in France, who falls in love with a very young Catalan woman who has also taken refuge in that country during the Second World War.

Committed to the Republic and close to Lluís Companys during the civil war, our protagonist fights adversity and overcomes the difficult situation of exile. He manages to manage the largest circus in France, exploit forests in Occitania under the German occupation, organize the first solidarity concerts of Pau Casals, collaborate with the Cerdanya maquis, escape from the clutches of the Gestapo and direct a Catalan publication that advocates unity of the anti-Franco front.

Facing hardships, persecutions and established morality, together they will discover love, freedom and Paris.

Andreu Claret Serra He is a journalist and writer. Born in Acs (France, 1946) in a family of exiled republicans, he began to practice his profession under Franco in the magazine Cambio 16. He has been a delegate of the Efe agency in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and director in Catalonia. He has collaborated in the main Catalan media, both the written press (among others La Vanguardia and Avui), and in various radio programs (El matí on Catalunya Ràdio and the program Aqui, with Josep Cuní, on SER). He led the European Institute of the Mediterranean and was director of the Anna Lindh Foundation, based in Egypt and is currently a member of the editorial committee of El Periódico and the advisory board of Diplocat. He has published a trilogy of novels about the civil war in Catalonia: El secret del brigadista (2008), El cònsol de Barcelona (2019), Premi Nèstor Luján and of which three editions have been published, and 1939. La caiguda de Barcelona ( 2021). He is also the author of Venjança (2017), set in Alexandria during the times of Hypatia.