Matthew Fraser

Matthew Fraser is a professor at the American University of Paris. He is the author of six books.

Today

Matthew Fraser

Why are French kids’ school bags so heavy?

It’s that time of year again in Paris, when the cool breeze and light rain announce the arrival of the back-to-school rush known as the ‘rentrée scolaire’. Every year, I am mildly alarmed at the sight of small schoolchildren carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. I watch them lurching head-heavy down the pavement, burdened by large backpacks stuffed with textbooks and school supplies. I wonder how on earth their tiny frames can possibly carry such heavy loads. They have no choice. A list of compulsory school supplies (called ‘fournitures scolaires’) is sent to French parents and published as an official decree on a government website.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

France is rediscovering its Catholic soul

The Pope is arriving in Paris like a rock star next month, taking centre stage at a mass rally of French youth in the Stade de France. The stadium’s 80,000 seats were quickly snapped up online for Leo XIV’s evening prayer vigil on 25 September. The following day, the Pope will celebrate an open-air mass in Place de la Concorde. More than 200,000 worshippers have already reserved places and a sea of 300,000 faithful are expected to congregate in the nearby Champs-Élysées. The stage is also set for delicate diplomatic tensions when the Pope meets with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace. Macron’s government just adopted a law permitting assisted suicide. The Pope has publicly expressed his opposition to legalised euthanasia.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

How Paris made the Mosleys

Parisians have suffered through four scorching heatwaves this summer, but none compares to the deadly canicule of early August 2003 when temperatures reached 40 degrees. About 15,000 perished in France during that heatwave, most elderly and frail and living alone in sweltering apartments without air conditioning. One of them was a 93-year-old English lady with a famous name. Diana Mosley, one of the glamorous Mitford sisters, had been exiled in France for more than a half-century. When the heatwave struck Paris in early August ’03, she suffered a slight stroke. The intense heat relentlessly persisted for ten days, hitting a peak of nearly 40 degrees on 11 August – the day Diana Mosley finally succumbed in her Left Bank apartment.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

Inside France’s war against radical mosques

Another mosque in France has been shut down, this one in a bleak north Paris suburb that usually makes headlines for criminal gangs and drug trafficking. The Attaqwa mosque, surrounded by council housing and warehouses in a grim section of Aulnay-sous-Bois, was closed by authorities this week for allegedly propagating radical Islamist ideology and inciting terrorism. Videos posted on social media also showed an imam at the mosque exhorting Muslims to strike their small children if they don’t pray. The mosque’s closure is the latest salvo in the French state’s decade-long campaign against extremist imams whose inflamed sermons are promoting jihad and glorifying martyrdom on French soil.

Wednesday

Matthew Fraser

Patrick Bruel and the death of French seduction

Patrick Bruel was once a heartthrob pop star whose dark brooding looks fuelled a ‘Bruelmania’ fever that swept through France in the 1990s. He sold millions of albums and was one of the country’s most bankable film stars. Today, Bruel is a different man. Age 67, he has been disgraced by multiple accusations of sexual assault and rape. Yesterday, two new women accused him of sex crimes, bringing the total number of cases to six. Bruel denies wrongdoing. The first allegations against Bruel surfaced several years ago but were dismissed by French police due to lack of evidence. Other women have since come forward claiming that he sexually harassed or assaulted them. Many cite incidents that stretch back two or three decades, beyond the statute of limitations.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

My Paris neighbourhood has become a no-go zone

When I moved into Paris’s seventh arrondissement, I was not expecting to find myself living in one of the city’s dreaded no-go zones. My neighbourhood, admittedly, is not one of the notorious districts on lists of forbidding no-go zones in the French capital’s bleak north end, plagued with crack houses and criminal gangs. I live in one of Paris’s poshest areas. The seventh arrondissement is known for its burnished boulevards and grand monuments. Every morning, I walk my two dogs on the Champ de Mars in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. World famous for the annual fireworks display to celebrate Bastille Day, the Champ de Mars boasts a glorious past.

Thursday

Matthew Fraser

Marine Le Pen’s return is a nightmare for French centrists

Marine Le Pen’s comeback has thrown France’s presidential election into disarray as rivals for the Élysée Palace scramble to revise their game plans. Before yesterday’s court ruling opened the way for Le Pen to enter the presidential race, other declared candidates on the left and right were counting on her lieutenant Jordan Bardella to be the right-wing National Rally’s candidate. Bardella has definite strengths, especially his handsome looks and appeal to young voters thanks to his massive following on social media. But his youth and inexperience, at age 30, are a handicap that opponents almost certainly were planning to exploit, especially in live television debates. Now it appears the Bardella scenario is off.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

What should Paris do about Hamza?

Armed with his water gun and foul language, a truculent 14-year-old Arab boy called Hamza has become the unexpected sideshow of the Paris heatwave season. Videos have gone viral showing the pudgy Algerian adolescent in swimming trunks terrorising Parisians along the crowded Canal Saint-Martin in the blistering summer heat. Shirtless and bare-foot, Hamza aims his water pistol at pedestrians and cyclists, extorting two euros (£1.70) from targets who are commanded to pay up or get sprayed. As his notoriety exploded on social media, television crews tracked down Hamza on the banks of the canal. The media attention seems to have encouraged his belligerent antics.

Tuesday

Matthew Fraser

Why do the French have a problem with air conditioning?

In the French city of Nantes, the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the city’s long-anticipated railway station was a big event. The socialist mayor, Johanna Rolland, presided over the unveiling of the eco-friendly station, which had been hailed as a marvel of architecture and engineering. The town’s councillors applauded its ‘natural ventilation’ system, which was supposed to make air conditioning unnecessary in hot summer months. Also present at the inauguration was celebrated French architect Rudy Ricciotti, the recipient of France’s highest distinctions, including the Légion d’honneur. He designed the station’s thermally self-regulating mezzanine. Its price tag was €37.5 million (£32 million). That was six years ago.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

Paris’s Left Bank is dying

In the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, the Café de Cluny has witnessed many tumultuous events in modern French history. During the liberation of Paris in 1944, it was surrounded by barricades. In May 1968, the café’s terrace was on the front lines of the student riots that nearly toppled the French government.  Today, the old café is closed and boarded up. For the past three years the corner location on Boulevard Saint-Michel has resembled a desolate urban ruin in a Latin Quarter once famous for its vibrant bohemian culture. The prime Rive Gauche address may finally have a new tenant, though not everyone is happy. The location may soon sport the bright red storefront logo of the fast-food chain Five Guys.

Saturday

Matthew Fraser

What will become of Paris’s ugliest building?

Parisians were recently treated to the impromptu spectacle of a shirtless 26-year-old man scaling bare-handed the 59-storey Montparnasse office tower. For many in the French capital, news reports of the vertiginous feat were another reminder – if they needed one – of how much they loathed the chocolate-brown skyscraper looming incongruously over the burnished boulevards of the Left Bank. The spiderman exploit was not witnessed by anyone inside the 210-metre skyscraper. The Montparnasse tower was empty. The city’s most unloved building has been vacant since March. More than a half-century after its inauguration, it’s awaiting a long-overdue facelift. The wait may be long. The Montparnasse is despised by Parisians as an eyesore, but it has also failed functionally.

Saturday

Matthew Fraser

The glorious revival of Paris’s English bookshop

Stepping into Smith & Son bookshop across from the Tuileries, my first instinct is to look for signs of change. A regular customer for decades, this is my first time here since its rebranding. The ground floor storeroom is brightly lit and pleasantly appointed. On the front-of-store table display, I recognise several titles, including Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, John of John by Douglas Stuart, and Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age. Immediately to the left, a cozy nook decorated with William Morris wallpaper is furnished with a soft purple sofa for customers to sit down with a book. Queen Elizabeth II looks down regally from an official portrait on the wall.

Sunday

Matthew Fraser

What happened to Provence?

The best time to visit Provence, I always advise when asked, is in the spring before the scorching heat and summer crowds. I have been spending time in the south of France since the early 1990s. Provence was fashionable in those days. Peter Mayle’s massively successful book, A Year in Provence, inspired thousands to pull up stakes and move to southern France to emulate his idyllic life in the Luberon hills. Some settled farther west in the Dordogne, famously called ‘Dordogneshire’ for its concentration of British expats. Mayle became a one-man publishing industry, following up with sequels including Toujours Provence and Encore Provence.

Tuesday

Matthew Fraser

The intertwined lives and deaths of Jean Genet and Simone de Beauvoir

A strange literary coincidence occurred in Paris exactly 40 years ago, on 14 April, 1986.  In the small hours of the morning, Jean Genet, enfant terrible of French literature, tripped on a step leading to the toilet in his tiny Left Bank hotel room. He fell forward and fatally smashed his head on the tile floor. Several hours later, feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir expired in a Paris hospital only a few blocks away. Two French literary legends were dead. They had died within hours of each other in the same district of Paris.  Jean Genet and Simone de Beauvoir were bonded by more than the dramatic unity of their final act. They had been close friends for more than four decades. Their connection was Jean-Paul Sartre.