This is Paris

You have to get along with those people, you have to get to know them a little and they have to get to know you... then you just chat... that's what makes a book a book... otherwise it wouldn't have any meaning. Have you ever wondered what it's like when people somewhere in Tramtaria tell you that you're their person? Then you start to see it from their perspective, then it's not just houses and landmarks anymore, but life, that kind of ordinary life, and that's what makes cities. Kindergarten

The first in a series of famous pictorial guides to world capitals. Paris, it's not just the sights, but especially its inhabitants: "concierge" housekeepers, their cats, small market traders, artists, all those Duponts sitting in cafe-bars and also gardens full of children... Miroslav Šašek, one of the most famous Czech emigrants, world traveler , painter and illustrator, is almost unknown here in the Czech Republic.

Originally an architect by profession, he left Czechoslovakia in 1947 to study in Paris, from where he never returned home. Later, he worked for several years as the editor of Svobodna Europa in Munich. At the end of the 1950s, Allen offered the London publisher the first book in a series of famous illustrated guides for children, This is... This is Paris. As he let himself be heard: he drew "Paris once quite differently... Paris as it really is. As I saw it when I first arrived there, and as I see it now..." According to the testimony of his editor, not a single comma had to be changed on the book and it went straight to the printer.

This is Paris, with his illustrations and text, was published in London in 1959, soon after by the McMillan publishing house in New York. Paris was followed by other metropolises and states. Šašak's books were successfully translated: they were published in tens of thousands of editions in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, South America, Japan and Scandinavia and brought their author numerous awards. Their re-editions have been published since 2003, and Šašek's books are experiencing a worldwide comeback today.