"Paris Vagabond is an unclassifiable masterpiece, a book that purports to be a novel but, accompanied as it is by the photographs of Patrice Molinard, is as much a brilliant documentary as a work of the imagination. In rich prose, suffused with the language of the street, and brilliantly rendered in English by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Jean-Paul Clebert captures the essence of a long-gone Paris of the poor, the criminal, and the outcast: a society of outsiders beyond the social pale. Clebert's is a genuinely anarchist voice, a free spirit who was an intrepid explorer of a Paris that was in many places practically ruinous but where the poor were not yet completely marginalized. He was also a true writer's writer, hailed by his mentor and friend Blaise Cendrars and admired by Henry Miller, who said that reading Paris Vagabond "roiled my guts.""-- Provided by publisher.

Translation of Paris insolite, co-authored with Patrice Molinard (photographs), published by Denoël, 1952, and reissued by Attila in 2009.

Back to the city -- Discovering Paris -- Apartment measurer -- Ambulant newsie -- Itineraries -- Vagabondage -- Saint-Paul neighborhood -- Jewish Quarter -- Rue Quincampoix -- Grand tour of Paris -- Saint-Ouen Fleamarket -- The zone -- By the river in Ivry -- Avenue Eugène-Thomas- -- Cité universitaire -- Grand Canal -- Keeping clean -- Pigalle -- First, eat -- Hunger -- Hunger delusions -- The merits of tea -- Les Halles, belly of Paris -- Pilfering -- "Food! You can't beat it" -- A clochard's paradise -- The Attic of Evil Spells -- Tea ceremony -- Luc's place -- Paris nights -- Station waiting rooms -- Cemetery -- "Make yourself at home" -- Camping out (in Paris) -- Feast day -- A brothel for down-and-outs -- Hospitable bistros -- Maubert -- Baby carriages -- Ragpickers -- Waste paper as a resource -- Wine warehouses of Bercy -- The last guinguettes -- A tattoo market -- Arab bistros -- Dying alone -- Unknown bistros -- Familiar streetwalkers -- A phantasmagorical alleyway -- Vie de bohème -- Idleness has much to be said for it -- Realm of the offbeat -- Sexual perversion -- Real-life Paris -- "I've had enough."