Used book – What if we loved France, Bernard Maris

"“So you’re writing a book about France?” “Yes.” “Ah… and from what angle? Decline? The future? Universality? Messianism? Food? Girls?” It’s true, you need an angle… So, let’s just say I’m also asking myself questions about debts and credits. A way of drawing up a balance sheet, assets and liabilities, but above all of restoring the word debt to its full meaning, that of fault, of guilt. A book to say: no, French people, you are not guilty, you owe nothing; unemployment, urban disaster, the decline of the language, that’s not you; racism, that’s not you, despite what they want you to believe. You are not guilty. Find again that smile that was the envy of travellers for centuries, in the “country where God is happy.”

Returning from Rome, a city where I could definitely live, I feel full of optimism for France and think that a little something could give back to this Paris, so sad, so noisy and once so cheerful, its smile."

B.M.