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  • Published: 19 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241402184
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $22.99

Missing Person




One of the great novels of Paris, from the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature

'I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the café terrace, waiting for the rain to stop'

Guy Roland, a private detective in Paris, is trying to solve the mystery of his own past. His memories erased by amnesia, he has no idea where he is from, or even his real name. As he searches for clues through the city's shadowy streets and smoky bars, latching on to strangers, accumulating mementoes, photographs, scraps and stories, he starts to piece together the events that brought him here, all leading back to the murky days of wartime occupation.

Patrick Modiano's portrait of a man obsessively hunting for his lost identity is an intoxicating noir masterpiece; a meditation on who we are and how we forget.

  • Published: 19 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241402184
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Patrick Modiano

Patrick Modiano is a celebrated French novelist, author of numerous books for adults and children. His work has been translated into over 30 languages. Notable awards include the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française, the Prix Goncourt and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 'for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies.'

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Praise for Missing Person

Delicate and cunning . . . Modiano's method is to sidle up to subjects of mystery and horror, indicating them without broaching them, as if gingerly fingering the outside of a poison bottle. . . He opens dark doors into the past out of a sunlit present.

John Sturrock, Times Literary Supplement

Modiano is a pure original

Adam Thirlwell