Paris Nocturne
By (Author) Patrick Modiano
Text Publishing
The Text Publishing Company
29th July 2015
Australia
General
Fiction
843.914
Short-listed for Australian Academy of the Humanities Medal for Excellence in Translation 2016 (Australia)
144
Width 153mm, Height 234mm
208g
In the opening scene of Paris Nocturne, the nameless narrator is hit by a car near Place des Pyramides. He and the woman driving the car are taken in a police van to the hospital. He's sure he has met her somewhere. He is given ether, wakes up in a different hospital, and the woman, Jacqueline Beausergent, has vanished. A mysterious figure presents him with an account of the accident and hands him an envelope stuffed with bank notes. Does Jacqueline Beausergent have the answers to the narrator's questions about the past, about his father
'Paris Nocturne is a discreet book, a perfect book.' Liberation 'Paris Nocturne is cloaked in darkness, but it is a novel that is turned towards the light.' L'Express 'Throughout these books, Modiano tackles thoughtfully and with great imaginative sympathy, that most necessary and problematic part of the human psyche - our relationship with the past.' Age/Sydney Morning Herald 'These novels [Paris Nocturne and Little Jewel] are not just a collection of marks on a collection of pages but a metaphysical archive of a time of complex personal and collective trauma. In Modiano, the city is a mirror, each of its streets a palimpsest. We gain access to an inner life that otherwise goes undetected.' Australian '[Modiano] has produced a slim volume of lyrical, elegant writing, a tale of substantial detail on the nebulous nature of memory.' North and South 'Reading Modiano's elegant and evocative prose is a mesmerising experience. Searching for identity and connection, it throws up more questions than answers and will have you hooked to the end.' Toowoomba Chronicle 'A swift nighttime noir.' Boston Globe, Best Books of 2015
Authors Bio, not available