October 1933 – Walter Benjamin leaves Ibiza for Paris, poor and alone and weakened by a bout of malaria.
He had first seen Paris before World War I, then had stayed there in 1926 and 1927, when Surrealism was in full swing. It was there that André Breton met Nadja, who would become his heroine, enabling him to see the French capital differently and opening his eyes to its random charms. But their relationship would end badly. As for Benjamin, although he fell in love with the city, his love was unrequited: anonymous and misunderstood, Benjamin was miserably poor and lonely there… which didn’t prevent him from undertaking one of his major works: Paris, Capital of the 19th Century.
But what about Paris itself, what did it do and what did it become? This second volume of the Manifeste incertain switches back and forth between the Roaring ‘20s and the present day, coming across the city’s poets, painters and rebels: Léon-Paul Fargue, Guillaume Apollinaire, Chaïm Soutine, Louis Chevalier and more. But wandering amongst shades is not without risk: they may well hide other, more improbable characters. Is this a dream world or reality? And what if reality were suddenly to expire in a dream?

Intertwining poetry, politics and history, this second volume of the Manifeste incertain calls upon the City of Lights’ historical figures, places and characters in a literary saga lavishly illustrated with over 200 drawings.