The titular missing person is Guy Roland, a P.I. who suffers from amnesia and resolves to rediscover his own past, lost to him years before during the Nazi occupation of France. With little more to go on than vague, barely discernable memories, he methodically unearths one small fact after another-a name, a photograph, an address-creating dossiers on himself and others from his past. Moody, atmospheric, and dreamlike, this novel follows conventions of both noir fiction and ghost stories but can be read on many levels. Is Guy's memory loss a metaphor for France's collective amnesia about the occupation? Modiano is a prolific novelist and screenwriter, best known to American audiences for his screenplay of Lacombe Lucien, cowritten with director Louis Malle, and more recently for his screenplay of the Jean-Paul Rappeneau film Bon Voyage. Missing Person was the 1979 winner of France's prestigious Prix Goncourt. Weissbort's excellent English translation first appeared in Great Britain in 1980. Recommended for all fiction collections.-Janet Evans, Pennsylvania Horticultural Soc. Lib., Philadelphia Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
In this strange, elegant novel, Patrick Modiano portrays a man in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation, the black hole of French memory.
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 attaché? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through a maze of his own repressed experience.
On one level Missing Person is a detective thriller, a 1950s, film noir mix of smoky cafés, illegal passports, and insubstantial figures crossing bridges in the fog. On another level it is also a haunting meditation on the nature of the self. Modiano's spare, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws listeners into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.
In this strange, elegant novel, Patrick Modiano portrays a man in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation, the black hole of French memory.
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 attaché? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through a maze of his own repressed experience.
On one level Missing Person is a detective thriller, a 1950s, film noir mix of smoky cafés, illegal passports, and insubstantial figures crossing bridges in the fog. On another level it is also a haunting meditation on the nature of the self. Modiano's spare, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws listeners into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169783032 |
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Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
Publication date: | 11/03/2015 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |