Without our wine guzzling, beret-donning allies across the Atlantic, we may have never known the taste of stinky cheese or all the joie de vivre Gerard Depardieu movies have brought to our lives. We thank them for liberté, égalité, fraternité but also for one of France’s best offerings to the world, the American ex-pat novelist.
Henry Miller
The Tropic of Cancer novelist lived Paris in the 1930s were he wrote a bunch of words and had a lot of sex.
R. Crumb
His underground comics have been called everything from brilliant to perverted. In the early ’90s he sold his sketchbooks and moved his family to the French countryside.
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
He was the lost generation poster boy, she was the ultimate flapper. Together they were a party power couple and a complete mess. The Fitzgeralds moved to Paris in 1924 where he began writing a novel that would end up being adapted into a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle.
James Baldwin
To escape the racial inequities in the States, Baldwin moved to Paris in the late ’40s. He clicked with the creative community immediately and finished his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Oscar Wilde
The witty Irish playwright spent the last years of his life in France, living in exile after his time at Reading Gaol. He died in poverty at a fleabag (now luxury) hotel in Paris in 1900.
Who is your fave ex-pat? Tweet us @JCWriters