On May 14, 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the I.M.F. and then considered the front-runner in the 2012 French presidential election, was arrested in New York City for sexual assault and attempted rape of a chambermaid at the Sofitel hotel in Midtown. At the time, the French public was shocked, not just by […]

Although Sam Mendes’s 1917 debuted in Paris theaters January 15, I, like many of my friends here, have been reluctant to see it. We’re going through our own form of PTSD right now, and frankly anything involving tear gas and chaos, sirens and claustrophobia, isn’t something we need more of. When I moved to France […]

A hilarious, candid account of what life in France is actually like, from a writer for Vanity Fair and GQ. Americans love to love Paris. We buy books about how the French parent, why French women don’t get fat, and how to be Parisian wherever you are. While our work hours increase every year, we […]

Since the Trump election, living in Paris as an American is kind of like being a registered sex offender.

Following Donald Trump’s stunning win, America’s knee jerk reaction has been to “find humour in it all,” which JOHN VON SOTHEN finds downright pathological, especially considering it was partly responsible for Trump’s victory in the first place. 

JOHN VON SOTHEN reveals why Paris’s most diverse and hipster arrondissement has become France’s Ground Zero.

For the past two years, I’ve been a contributor for the online publication Mediapart thanks to a column they’ve given me called Schizofrench. It’s a sandbox of sorts; essays and rants ranging from my love of Moleskin notebooks to my hatred for French flea markets, to the way Airbnb has changed my neighbourhood sitcom. All of it, of course, is super serious and fits in […]

A flea market (vide grenier) visit ranks up there as one of the things people most romanticize about France. Don’t believe the hype says JOHN VON SOTHEN, who’s had his share of an institution that has seen better days

The European elections will soon be upon us, yet it seems I’m the only one who cares. And I can’t even vote! But my interest lie less in the politics of Europe and more in imagining what Europe would look like if they really did go all the way, as in the full federal sense, […]

I don’t care if Liberation folds. I really don’t. I’m done with mourning newspaper deaths, and ever since my native Washington Post sold out to Amazon, I swore I’d never get attached to one again. I also don’t really care if Liberation becomes a Starbucks either or a Foundation Cartier or an Office Depot. What I […]