Modiano’s novella is haunted by a gauzy sense of place and character. He draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of others, to present a dreamlike biography of a place — a love song to a Paris that no longer exists.

Shadowed by the dark period of the Nazi Occupation, this novella reveals Modiano’s fascination with the lost, obscure, or mysterious. To read Modiano is to enter his world of uncertainties and the almost accidental way in which people find their fates.

Patrick Modiano is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature