The book is a study of Left Bank cafe society in post-war Paris, particularly the influence of American expatriates, as indicated by its subtitle: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, and Others on the Left Bank.
The time frame of the book's scope, 1946–1960, mirrors that of Richard Wright's arrival in Paris from the US until his death.
[1] This begins with the arrival of Wright at Gertrude Stein's Paris apartment, effectively handing the baton over from the pre-war artist-led bohemian Paris of Stein, Anaïs Nin, and Henry Miller to the more literary-focused cafe society.
It ranges through the existentialism of Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, African-American writers such as James Baldwin and Chester Himes, as well as Frantz Fanon and Sadegh Hedayat.
According to a review in Publishers Weekly, "Campbell successfully evokes the flavor of Parisian cafe life in this memoir that will be of great interest to literature devotees.