num_pages: 168
description: WINNER OF THE 2014 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE!Winner of the Prix GoncourtIn this strange, elegant novel, winner of France's premier literary prize, 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 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.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 sparce, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws his readers into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.Librarian's note: See an alternate cover edition for this ISBN here.
language: English
title: Missing Person
titlecomplete: Missing Person (Verba Mundi Book)
characters: Guy Roland, Hutte
genres: France, Mystery, Nobel Prize, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Contemporary, French Literature, Fiction, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 8770
places: Paris
awards: awardedAt: 252489600000
name: Prix Goncourt, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: French-American Foundation Translation Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher