Missing Person by Patrick Modiano - 1978 - 2005 - translated from French by Daniel Weissbort

Missing Person by Patrick Modiano - 1978 - 2005 - translated from French by Daniel Weissbort

His sixth published work, it was awarded the Prix Goncourt Prize


Paris in July 2020 - Thyme for Tea

My Posts for Paris in July 2020

1. “Forain” - a set in Paris Short Story by Mavis Gallant
2. “Winter Rain” - a Short story by Alice Adams about an American woman living in Paris after World War Two
3. Marc Chagall by Jonathan Wilson
4. Missing Person by Patrick Modiano

My Prior Posts on Patrick Modiano

Born July 25, 1945

2014 - Awarded Nobel Prize (prior to then he had won all of France’s most prestigious literary awards).

He has written thirty novels, a memoir and as well as several film scripts.

Missing Person is the sixth novel I have read by Patrick Modiano.
During July in Paris 2017 I posted on The Black Note Book, After the Circus, and The Occupation Trilogy.

Occupation Trilogy is a work of a much higher order than the other three novels, it is a sublimely brilliant almost surreal recreation of what it was like to be a French Jew during the occupation of Paris by the Nazis.  It is why he won the Nobel Prize.  My bottom line is any one interested in this period will be glad they read the trilogy. The other three works are interesting well done works but one would have to say first read the trilogy.

Missing Person is kind of a detective story. In this story a man has lost all memory of his past prior to 1955.


Ten  years ago, Guy Roland lost all memories of his life prior to 1955.  He worked  as a private detective in Paris
until the owner of the agency retired.  He decides to use his detective skills to try to uncover his past. He finds some clues to his past but the trail seems to stop during World War Two. Then he goes deeper.

 It does appear he is a Greek Jew, Jimmy Stern from Solonica.  He lived in Paris under the assumed name Pedro McEvoy.  He worked for the legate of the Dominican Republic.  He was involved with a network of non- French nationals seeking to leave France.

As he seems to recover his memory, he goes to French Polynesia to look for an old girl friend.

The novel goes into lots of detail about the city of Paris.

The Black Notebook by Jean Patrick Modiano (2016, 144 pages)

Paris in July - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

The Black Notebook by Jean Patrick Mondiano (translated by the award winning Mark Polizzotti) centers on the quest of a writer, Jean, to attempt to discover information concerning a woman, who was his occasional lover, fifty years ago, right after the close of The Algerian War for Independence, 1964.  Paris then was ripe with suspicion, full of contrasts between the respectable and the dangerous.  We see the character of the city being impacted by new comers from what was once French colonial North Africa.  The Black Notebook is deeply saturated with an almost hallucinatory miasma of memories of walks around Paris.

Using a black note book in which, fifty years ago, he recorded his activities and his contacts Jean attempts to discover if this woman may still be alive and to unravel the secrets of her troubled past she kept deeply veiled.  

The Black Notebook is very much about the nature of memory.  We see the voluntary and involuntary memories Jean has as he wanders Paris, fifty years ago he was a struggling young writer, now he is quite successful.  The days of the poverty stricken streets of his youth begin to come back to him, intertwined with his thoughts on Paris, a city he loves and knows intimately.  As he walks the city, he begins to think of an even almost imagine he sees Jean Duval (1820 to 1862),  lover for twenty years in a very volatile relationship with Charles Baudelaire.  We almost enter the narrator's subconscious as we know he equates this relationship to his of fifty years ago.  I admit I loved this touch.

The Black Notebook is a fascinating book, very much worth reading. 

One sees the profound influence of Proust in this book.

I hope to read his Trilogy set during the occupation of Paris by the Nazis, highly praised by the Nobel Committee, this month.

Jean Patrick Modiano (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ paˈtʁik ˌmɔdjaˈno]; born 30 July 1945) is a French novelist and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. He previously won the 2012 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the 2010 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France for lifetime achievement, the 1978 Prix Goncourt for Rue des boutiques obscures, and the 1972 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for Les Boulevards de ceinture. His works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have been celebrated in and around France, but most of his novels had not been translated into English before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. - from Amazon

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