Nights of Revolution

The eighteenth-century French writer Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne recorded history, but so embroidered with his own imagination that the distinction between fact and fiction is often blurred. He was nicknamed 'The Owl', because it was his custom to walk the streets of Paris at night. Les Nuits Révolutionnaires (based on Les Nuits de Paris) spans the period 1789 - 1793 and, rather than giving a factual account of those years, Restif's writing brings to life the nocturnal world of the troubled city, as he observed it during the hours of darkness.