National Monuments: A Photographic Tour of France

• A visual narrative, a poetic journey through France’s heritage.
• Magnificent images, complemented by an elegant, fluid and rhythmic layout.
• A sensitive exploration of national monuments, accompanied by texts by Michel Bussi, one of the French public’s favourite contemporary authors.
• A compact format creating a beautiful object that is easy to read and accessible to all.

An inspiring work, halfway between a photo book and a travel journal, which invites you on a journey. By proposing an eleven-stage itinerary across the whole of France, this beautiful book gives you time to reflect.Readers will also discover the full richness and diversity of France’s national monuments: prehistoric and ancient sites, abbeys, castles, houses, cathedrals, fortified sites, memorials, parks and gardens…A monument is not merely a piece of architecture; it is a living place, brought to life by men and women – restorers, guides, gardeners, curators, occasional visitors or local residents – who pass on this history. This book therefore focuses on the experience rather than a mere catalogue, following a geographical progression in eleven major stages, each comprising around ten monuments. The photographic style is varied: full-page images, close-ups, short series, aerial views… Each stage opens with a poetic title and a short text by Michel Bussi, like entries in a traveller’s notebook. The 110 or so national monuments do not constitute a network of isolated stones, but a living organism, viewed through a human lens – in this case, that of Michel Bussi. This personal touch lends the book a narrative coherence, unity and depth that a mere succession of images would not provide. The production of this beautiful book has been designed to make it an elegant and carefully crafted object, whilst remaining modest, handy and accessible, with a particularly attractive retail price.

Born in 1965, Michel Bussi grew up in Normandy, where he still lives and works today. Before becoming known as a best-selling author, Michel Bussi pursued an academic career as a lecturer and researcher in geography. His attention to places, to the lines that shape landscapes and their inhabitants, is, in fact, a truly distinctive feature of his novels. He published his first thriller, *Code Lupin*, in 2006. It was *Un avion sans elle* (2012) that brought him to the attention of the general public and even beyond France’s borders. Since then, with a very steady publishing schedule, he has established himself on the literary scene as a key figure in genre fiction. It is this dual identity as a geographer and a popular author that led the Centre des monuments nationaux to ask Michel Bussi to write the texts for this book – an invitation he accepted with enthusiasm.

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