Patrick Modiano

"Jean Bosman, now his early twenties, soon becomes aware of a set of disturbing coincidences involving an elusive woman, his childhood home, and a host of disquieting characters who seem inordinately interested in his past, for reasons he can't fathom. As he journeys into the echoes of memory, past and present become increasingly intertwined, forming a web spanning half a century" -- Inside jacket.

"For ten years Guy Roland has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a one-time client, into his detective agency. Guy makes full use of Hutte's files - directories, yearbooks, and papers of all kinds going back half a century - but leads to his former life are few. Could he really be that person in a photograph, a young man remembered by some as a South American attache?...

"In this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early years--shadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare, absorbing, and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly, Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his "finest...

Four narrators, a student from a cafe, a private detective hired by an aggrieved husband, the heroine herself and one of her lovers, construct a portrait of Jacqueline Delanque, otherwise known as Louki. The daughter of a single mother who works in the Moulin Rouge, Louki grows up in poverty in Montmartre. Her one attempt to escape her background fails when she is rejected from the Lycee Jules-Ferry. She meanders on through life, into a cocaine habit,...

A young Frenchman's romance with a woman who lives off men. After stealing some money from a dentist, they go to London where she sleeps with various characters while he writes his first novel. One day she disappears for fifteen years. A study in character.

Traces a young peasant's journey from potential Resistance member to Gestapo recruit. At once the story of a nation and one troubled boy's horrific coming of age, the disquieting portrait of lost innocence and guilt.

The hairdresser's husband: Antoine fulfills his lifelong fantasy of marrying a hairdresser, which he has dreamed of since he was a child. Yvonne's perfume: French expatriate Victor falls in love with Yvonne, an aspiring actress. Half a chance: Alice is released from prison and goes on an adventure with two men, one of whom she believes may be her father. Girl on the bridge: Knife-thrower Gabor saves Adèle from jumping off a bridge and convinces...