In a good story, the setting is more than just a place: A region might provoke grand ideas; a house might hold secrets that unlock a plot twist; a city might function as the most important character. In John le Carré’s obliquely autobiographical thriller, A Perfect Spy, only a couple of scenes happen on Corfu, but the Greek island sets in motion an MI6 operative’s slow, fracturing destruction. In the 1,000-year-old Japanese classic The Tale of Genji, Kyoto’s castles and shrines encapsulate an empire, a mindset, and a social system. And in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, Paris and its inhabitants serve as foils against which the author defines his roguish identity, along with that of a young America still figuring out its place in the world.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s books desk:

• The writer who knew the joys of sex
• A Ukrainian crime caper that undermines expectations
• The novelist who learned to write anger—and its aftermath
• “How to Open a Hole,” a poem by Nicky Vaid

This week, The Atlantic launched “The Writer’s Way,” a series of features that sends writers off to retrace the steps of their favorite authors—literally, yes, by traveling to their settings, but also thematically, by asking how and why the authors took these particular paths. Future articles will take readers to Corfu and Kyoto, but the first entry is an essay by Caity Weaver that is, fittingly, about travel itself. Caity, in her first story as an Atlantic staff writer, attempts to capture the experience of Mark Twain’s journey to Paris and Versailles, a crucial leg on a tour of Europe and “the Holy Land” that made the 19th-century author famous. The result is—I’ll say it—as funny, unpredictable, and slyly insightful as the original, and its subject is not only France but also America’s image of itself—then and now. It’s best if you read it for yourself. Start here:

For as long as Paris has existed, a group of people known by many names—derelicts; lollygaggers; scammers; bums—have sought to pass time there at no cost to themselves. Once, some 2,000 years ago, so many such personages (then known as barbarians) came to Paris simultaneously that the city was destroyed. Today, their descendants are politely called writers.

One of the most successful to ever do it was a larkish American steamboat operator. In 1866, when he was 31, he convinced a San Francisco newspaper that the crucial thing to do in the lurid gloaming following the Civil War—as Army officials were yet racing to recover human remains before they were eaten by hogs—was to send him on a five-month “great pleasure excursion” through Europe and the Middle East at the paper’s expense. In exchange, he would send back riotous letters describing his trip. And that is how Mark Twain got to Paris …

One hundred fifty-eight years after Mark Twain’s visit, the number of Americans who travel to Europe annually far surpasses the population of the United States in the year he was born. Many of them—more than 3 million in 2022—head straight to France, which is now the most-visited country on Earth. Virtually every living American, save those blind from infancy, has seen images of Paris. There is no need for a civilian to travel there and describe it. And yet, the wastrel, the conniver—the author—must ask: Wouldn’t it be best to send one more? Just to be sure? Isn’t it possible that dispatching a 21st-century writer to Paris to tramp along in Twain’s wake might enhance the modern reader’s appreciation of Twain’s work by proxy? It’s certainly not impossible. Shouldn’t we follow this instinct? Mightn’t it be flat-out imperative for us to do so?

And that is how I got to Paris!

Read the full article.

The Queen of the Night, by Alexander Chee

Chee has said that he spent 15 years writing his 2016 novel, although readers are likely to finish it in a flash—it’s too much fun not to speed through. Named after the famously difficult “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, the book follows a 19th-century American, Lilliet Berne, as she makes her way from the Midwest to a New York circus and then a Parisian brothel, finally reaching the heights of French society as an opera singer and courtesan. Along the way, she witnesses the rise and fall of the revolutionary Paris Commune, flies in a hot-air balloon, and wears an enormous number of sumptuously described dresses. This is the kind of writing to pick up when you need to lose yourself for an afternoon inside a world radically different from your own. It is also the perfect story for readers who enjoy a little high drama that, at times, borders on camp—as is so often the case in opera.  — Rhian Sasseen

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