Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the author of more than thirty books and one of France's most admired contemporary novelists. Out of the Dark is a moody, expertly rendered tale of a love affair between two drifters. The narrator, writing in 1995, looks back thirty years to a time when, having abandoned his studies and selling off old art books to get by, he comes to know Gerard Van Bever and Jacqueline, a young, enigmatic couple who seem to live off roulette winnings. He falls in love with Jacqueline; they run off to England together, where they share a few...

Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the author of more than thirty books and one of France's most admired contemporary novelists. Out of the Dark is a moody, expertly rendered tale of a love affair between two drifters. The narrator, writing in 1995, looks back thirty years to a time when, having abandoned his studies and selling off old art books to get by, he comes to know Gerard Van Bever and Jacqueline, a young, enigmatic couple who seem to live off roulette winnings. He falls in love with Jacqueline; they run off to England together, where they share a few...

In 1988 Patrick Modiano stumbles across an ad in the personal columns of the New Year's Eve 1941 edition of Paris Soir "Missing, a young girl, Dora Bruder, age 15, height 1 m 55, oval-shaped face, gray-brown eyes, gray sports jacket, maroon pullover, navy blue skirt and hat, brown gym shoes."

Placed by the parents of Dora, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about her and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away from the people hiding her. There is only one other official mention of her...