In your wildest dreams …

… have you imagined owning a loft, a garret, a cozy little pied a terre in the world’s most romantic city?

David Benjamin has, too! …

… and he’s done it.

In his forthcoming memoir, scheduled for release in early April 2025, the award-winning Madison writer chronicles a harrowing, often hilarious journey through the French real estate labyrinth that ends, almost miraculously, with

An Apartment in Paris

David Benjamin’s reportorial style and distinctive brand of humor, Benjamin open the “great doors” of Paris and explore

• the city’s nooks, crannies, courtyards and alleyways
• its breathtaking vistas and its “jewel box” of surprises
• its sometimes grubby and moldy underbelly
• the weird legal intricacies of property transfer in La Belle France
• the agony and ecstasy of a French mortgage

Plus

• snippets of Parisian history drawn from the author’s exhaustive research
• a tour of the bistros and cafés of the world’s best city for eating out
• a rich lode of asides, observations and digressions on natives and tourists, the Louvre and lovers, kings, queens and criminals, waiters, bakers and greengrocers, painters and poets
• the most elegant strippers in the world
• and the “guardian angel” who made it possible—

Benjamin says, “Paris has always been a place where impulse triumphs over reason, where a silly romantic notion can cloud your mind and change you forever. This is why, when you see a window in Paris full of real estate ads, you should run for your life.”