On this day in history, July 14, 1789, Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a royal fortress that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie Antoinette, were executed.

In honour of Bastille Day, we asked some of our French booksellers to recommend books which exemplify this important day in French history. July 14–Bastille Day–is celebrated as a national holiday in France. We’ve also included some books by famous American authors who lived is Paris while writing their masterpieces.

A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris for two years while he worked on his novel A Farewell to Arms. While in Paris he married his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer.

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway’s frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto — of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized — is one of the greatest moments in literary history.

Native Son
Richard Wright

In 1948 Richard Wright, one of America’s greatest African American writers, moved to Paris with his family. Here Richard Wright wrote two novels as well as other works.

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny: by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright’s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

Observations sur l’ouvrage de M. de Calonne
D’anglas Boissy
Recommended by Librairie L’amour qui bouquine, Alise-Sainte-Reine, France

The American
Henry James

At age 29, Henry James spent two years in Paris writing his famous book The American.

During a trip to Europe, Christopher Newman, a wealthy American businessman, asks the charming Claire de Cintre to be his wife. To his dismay, he receives an icy reception from the heads of her family, who find Newman to be a vulgar example of the American privileged class. Brilliantly combining elements of comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama, this tale of thwarted desire vividly contrasts nineteenth-century American and European manners.

L’ancien régime et la révolution
Alexis Tocqueville
Recommended by Abraxas-libris, Bécherel, France