Kiki's Memoirs is a 1929 autobiography by Alice Prin

Alice Prin

Alice Ernestine Prin , nicknamed Queen of Montparnasse, and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French artist model, nightclub singer, actress, memoirist, and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated, early 1920s culture of Paris.- Early life :Alice Prin was born in...

 (October 2, 1901 - April 29, 1953), known as Kiki de Montparnasse

Alice Prin

Alice Ernestine Prin , nicknamed Queen of Montparnasse, and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French artist model, nightclub singer, actress, memoirist, and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated, early 1920s culture of Paris.- Early life :Alice Prin was born in...

; a model, artist, and actress working in Montparnasse

Montparnasse

Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in the first half of the twentieth century.

Translated from the French by Samuel Putnam

Samuel Putnam

Samuel Putnam was an American translator and scholar of Romance languages.His most famous work is his 1949 English translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote...

, her memoirs are a lively account of the bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 lifestyle typical among the artists in Paris during the 1920s, with an introduction provided by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 and Tsuguharu Foujita

Tsuguharu Foujita

was a painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings.- Education :In 1910 when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music....

. The memoirs were first published in English in 1930, but due to their sometimes explicit content, were banned in the United States until the 1970s. A new edition was released in 1996.

• ISBN 0-88001-496-2 ,1996 edition.