{"product_id":"paris-in-the-present-tense-by-mark-helprin-2018","title":"Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin (2018)","description":"\u003cspan\u003eMark Helprin’s powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003emaître\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eParis in the Present Tense\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Ex Libris Used Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44392910946531,"sku":"EXL1366","price":3.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0562\/5675\/7951\/files\/38723212.jpg?v=1707785237","url":"https:\/\/www.exlibrismichigan.com\/products\/paris-in-the-present-tense-by-mark-helprin-2018","provider":"Ex Libris Used Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}