This posthumously published memoir describes the time that the young Ernest Hemingway's spent in Paris after the first world war. The title is appropriate: reading A Moveable Feast is a little like sitting down to a banquet with a host of bohemian luminaries. Not only does Hemingway depict himself surrounded by literary mentors and competitors, he is careful to record his gastronomic experiences. Food, visual art, alcohol and racing provide the backbone of this unassuming memoir.

This new paperback edition, edited by Hemingway's grandson Seán, restores the book to the 19 chapters "based on a typed manuscript with original notations in Hemingway's hand  the last draft of the last book that he ever worked on". It isn't just for purists: additional chapters include detailed accounts of his relationship with his first wife, Hadley, with whom he lived impecuniously but happily in Paris between 1921 and 1926.

The writing is casual and affectionate, the prose engaging and easy to read, despite his liking for sinewy sentences strung together with conjunctions. It is as if Hemingway had taken note of Gertrude Stein's penchant for repetition; Stein is a frequent visitor to the young writer. As well as providing a glimpse of her life with her "companion" Alice Toklas, Hemingway lets the reader in on some of Stein's bizarre views on male homosexualityand her thoughts on thriftiness.

Hemingway's recollections are at times almost gossipy. We discover that he did not get on with Ford Madox Ford, and initially failed to tell Hilaire Belloc apart from Aleister Crowley. Ezra Pound always admired the work of his friends, "which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment", and Wyndham Lewis "just looked nasty", with eyes like "an unsuccessful rapist". This edition is punctuated with photographs, both of the manuscript and of the author and his contemporaries in Paris, including James Joyce and F Scott Fitzgerald. Each chapter is short and vignette-like, comical, bitchy and warm. They are best read a few at a time, so as to get into the flow of Hemingway's surprising sentences, but not to be overwhelmed by the high concentration of egos gathered together on one page.