Invisible ink

"One devours this book sentence by sentence." Le Figaro Littéraire

The new novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author

Who is Noëlle Lefebvre? Why did she disappear? And which memory will become the key to Jean's search? Word for word, the extraordinary new story by Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano closes like a magical circle. Jean Eyben is just under twenty when he takes a job at a Parisian detective agency for a few months and is assigned to investigate the missing Noëlle Lefebvre. All clues lead nowhere, yet the old mystery continues to haunt Jean even years later. There are the names of Noëlle's contacts, the dossier that was secretly taken at the time, and her sporadically kept calendar with the mysterious phrase "If I had known...". When Jean meets an old friend, a detail suddenly becomes significant for the first time: Noëlle Lefebvre comes "from a village near Annecy." Just like him. A stunning, deeply moving novel about the sovereignty of memory and the interpretation of one's own story.