Richard Sennett: The Foreigner

Richard Sennett has spent an intellectual lifetime exploring how humans live in cities. In a pair of essays published together as The Foreigner, he explores displacement in the metropolis through two vibrant historical moments: mid-19th-century Paris, with its community of political exiles, a place where "you look in the mirror and see someone who is not yourself", and Renaissance Venice, where state-imposed restrictions on "outsider" groups - including prostitutes as well as Jews - had some surprising cultural consequences. He came to the bookshop to discuss the book following its publication.