Il faut vivre avec son époque’: Marcel Aymé’s Depictions of Wartime Paris

As a longtime resident of Montmartre, author Marcel Aymé had a front-row seat from which to observe Parisians’ behavior during the Occupation. The French capital features prominently in the fiction he published during and after World War II, most notably Le Vin de Paris (1947) and Le Chemin des écoliers (1946). Rejecting the myth of resistance that emerged in the 1940s, Aymé instead portrays a Paris infused with indifference, hypocrisy, greed, and deceit. This paper will explore the counter-history unveiled through Aymé’s depiction of the city.