Article: Sketching Paris' Russian emigres.(B)(Books)(On Books)

Byline: Colin Walters

The Parisian neighborhood of Billancourt in these 13 stories by Nina Berberova, the Russian expatriot writer, is located between the Seine and the Bois de Boulogne and is the site of a Renault factory. It is not the banlieue, or suburbs, to which the photographer Robert Doisneau so often returned with his camera, but it is of a Doisneau shot that one thinks in the opening tale, "Billancourt Fiesta," where a 14th of July crowd of White Russians in exile has gathered in the public square:

"Parts ran across heads like bright shoelaces, took a turn eight and a half centimeters above the ear and, rounding the crown in a free line, ...

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