Failing Paris is the story of a week in the life of Sabine Wilcox, the 19-year-old student who has left the stifling rural existence of the American Southwest in exchange for a year in Paris. But the City of Light offers her no refuge. With only one week to address a dire problem, Sabine’s past and present painfully collide. Her life intertwines with two men who prove to be both more, and less, than they first appeared.
This is a first novel by a young writer whose work must not be overlooked.
Nominated for the PEN USA/West FICTION PRIZE 2000 Read an article by Dunn: Continental Drift, Or, How I Justify the Dizzyingly Downward Spiral of My Life and Ambitions
About the Author
 SAMANTHA DUNN was raised in northern New Mexico and spent years in Australia and France. She is a widely-published American journalist, contributing to a number of magazines and newspapers in the United States.
“Failing Paris is exactly the kind of book I'm always looking for — something sophisticated, edgy, sexy and really beautifully written. Samantha Dunn clearly has a brilliant novelistic career ahead of her.”
JANET FITCH, author of White Oleander
“The prose is precise, captivating, and the obvious reason for the book’s nomination for the PEN/West award. This is no airy tale of croissants, cafés and long walks along the boulevards. It is a painful story, honestly told, of dreams never realised.”
THE TLS, LONDON
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The Critics Praise:
“Failing Paris, like Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays, is the kind of novel that seems polished of every extraneous word, shaped like a bullet for velocity… Such fierce control over her material, coupled with feeling and beauty of language, makes Failing Paris the successful debut that it is. By giving us exactly enough, Dunn makes us wish there were more.”
LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Dunn fastens on the effective device of lacing both translated and untranslated French thought throughout the book…It gracefully captures the fragmentary experience undergone by so many…slowly developing their glancing relationship with the language that endlessly permits one to visit, but never offers citizenship.”
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
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