The Paris Book: A Novel About Hemingway's Last Book

While at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in 1956, a beleaguered Hemingway—suffering from a host of maladies—discovers two trunks filled with notes and manuscripts left there thirty years ago. It is these reminisces that eventually result in the posthumous publication of A Moveable Feast. This historical novel details the subjects of the notes taken in 1921-27 Paris and invents the creation of the last book he wrote before taking his life in 1961. The Paris Book is for both Hemingway readers and scholars. A novel so rich in details, it makes the reader feel as if they are walking with Papa in the City of Light, literature and literati. Risch blends the time of Papa's failing mental health with the escape he discovers within the pages of his newly found Parisian notebooks. The Paris Book is both a memoir and the back story to why my Uncle Ernest Hemingway not only wanted to write, but needed to write, A Moveable Feast. — Hilary Hemingway, author of Hemingway In Cuba Robert Risch and I look at Hemingway through many of the same lenses, and, yes, the same love. At the end, Bob has undertaken the research necessary to produce an intimate and warm portrait of Ernesto as he writes The Moveable Feast in Cuba, Spain and Idaho before ending the book—and his life—in 1961. — Norberto Fuentes, Hemingway scholar, author of The Autobiography of Fidel Castro