Missing Person — Patrick Modiano

An amnesiac searches for his identity, from Polynesia to Rome, in this novel by the Nobel Prize�"winning author of Dora Bruder.

Guy Roland is in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation. For ten years, he has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a onetime 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 his leads are few. Could he really be the person in that 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 the maze of his own repressed experience.

Published in France as Rue des Boutiques obscures, this is both a detective mystery and a haunting meditation on the nature of the self, Patrick Modiano's spare, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws readers into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.

Praise for Missing Persons

“[An] elliptical, engrossing rumination on the essence of identity and the search for self.” -- Frank Sennet, Booklist

“A fine introduction to his work. . . . Beautifully written and perfectly noirish, as though the world were being seen through a haze of Gauloise smoke. Be warned, though: after reading this, a sensitive soul may well seize up the next time a stranger waves.” -- Kirkus Reviews