Pakistani-French Vendor’s Memoirs a Bestseller

The French literary event of the spring promises to be not the tortured musings of some silk-shirted philosopher but the memoirs of this 52-year-old Pakistani who came to France as an illegal immigrant and is now a hero of the Latin Quarter. Akbar travelled through Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Romania and Sweden before disembarking in Rouen in 1972. His book charts his life from his first job in Pakistan as a barefoot buffalo herder to his employment, in 1973, as a street vendor of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly.