Paris Interzone, by James Campbell

In this supple, readable literary history, Campbell explores the second wave of 20th-century writers to seek inspiration in Paris. The two central figures are the great but haunted black writer Richard Wright and the Scottish firebrand Alex Trocchi, addicted to literature and heroin. Campbell's pell-mell account of the rive gauche in 1946-60 has an astonishing cast – from Beckett and James Baldwin to Mailer and the Beats – and spans a gamut of works ranging from Lolita to The Story of O.