Flavorwire

Today marks the release of Rosecrans Baldwin’s sophomore effort Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, a memoir about moving to his favorite city in the world. As might be expected, the City of Light itself plays as much of a role as any other character Baldwin encounters — we’d almost consider it to be a book with two main characters: Baldwin and Paris. We’re always interested in the ways real cities blend into fiction and take on lives of their own, so we came up with a list of a few other books starring metropolises around the world. Click through to check out ten books in which the cities characters inhabit become characters in themselves, and let us know if we missed any of your favorites in the comments.

Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, Rosecrans Baldwin

In this new memoir, half love letter and half Dear John letter to the City of Light, Paris routinely beats Baldwin down, makes a fool out of him, raises him up, and fills him with wonder, all over the same café crème. The book is as much about the city as it is about Baldwin — perhaps not unusual for a “year abroad”-style memoir, but you’ve never seen Paris quite like this. She is relatively lewd, but ultimately, pretty forgiving. C’est la vie.