My first major investigation of contemporary travel writing practices focussed on Paris. I examined the work and the writing methods of three important figures in French literature: Annie Ernaux, François Maspero and Jean Rolin, writers normally studied for their fiction writing. Along with a documentary photographer, Anaïk Frantz, who worked with Maspero on his prizewinning travel book Passengers of the Roissy Express (1990). Maspero challenges travel writing by situating his journey on the Paris train that serves CDG airport. In travel writing, this conceit of the unexpectedly short journey is taken up by the other two authors discussed here. Annie Ernaux Annie Ernaux was born at Lillebonne in September 1940 but now lives near Paris. During the 1990s she published two collections of what appear to be diaries of everyday life. They are documents of her daily commuting on the RER and metro from a suburb of Paris, Val d’Oise in Cergy, into the city centre. The two books in this seri
ISSN 2753-7803
