Take Me To Paris, Johnny

‘[A] literary masterpiece…Unparalleled in Australian letters…Makes most fiction, here or elsewhere, look paltry by comparison.’ * Peter Craven, from the Introduction *
‘A superbly crafted memoir…[A] subtle balance of formality and intimacy, of rationality and passion.’ * John Rickard, from the Afterword *
‘Brilliantly accomplished use of language…Few other books documenting this illness rumble and resonate with such sustained power.’ * Robert Dessaix *
‘[Take Me to Paris, Johnny] reminds us of the complexity of relationships…of the simultaneous strength and fragility of love.’ * Dennis Altman *
‘A remarkable, beautifully written memoir that captures and preserves the jittery zeitgeist among active gay men moving around the globe in the early ’80s.’ * Gail Bell, Monthly *
‘Finely written…Foster deftly recounted his “cross-colour, cross-class” relationship, and brought his lover back to life on the page.’ * Steve Dow, Age *

John Foster was born in Melbourne in 1944. He studied at the University of Melbourne, then in Germany and the United Kingdom. In 1971 he returned to the University of Melbourne, where for many years he lectured in the Department of History. He edited the collections Community of Fate: Memoirs of German Jews in Melbourne (1986) and Victorian Picturesque: The Colonial Gardens of William Sangster (1989).

Take Me to Paris, Johnny was Foster’s tribute to his lover, Juan Céspedes, a Cuban dancer who died of AIDS in 1987. The memoir was published in 1993 and shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year award; within a year, John Foster himself was dead.

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