Time was soft there: a paris sojourn at shakespeare & co. - Jeremy Mercer

In a leafy square on Paris's Left Bank, a young writer finds a home and an unlikely mentor among the shelves of a legendary bookshop.

Wandering through Paris's Left Bank one day, poor and unemployed, Canadian reporter Jeremy Mercer ducked into a little bookstore called Shakespeare & Co.

Mercer bought a book, and the staff invited him up for tea.

Within weeks, he was living above the store, working for the proprietor, George Whitman, patron saint of the city's down-and-out writers, and immersing himself in the love affairs and low-down watering holes of the shop's makeshift staff.

Time Was Soft There is the story of a journey down a literary rabbit hole in the shadow of Notre Dame, to a place where a hidden bohemia still thrives.