"PARIS. LOOKING FOR a young girl, Dora Bruder, 15 years old, 1m55, oval face, gray-brown eyes, gray sport coat, burgundy sweater, navy blue skirt and hat, brown sport shoes. Please send all information to Mr. and Mrs. Bruder, 41, boulevard Ornano, Paris." It is this ad found in a newspaper dated on December 31, 1941, that inspires Patrick Modiano, Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014, to write this short book in 1997, two years after President Jacques Chirac officially acknowledges the participation of France in nazi crimes. Written as a police investigation, the narrator sets out to find this young Jewish girl, a runaway who was recaptured several times by the French police and whose life would be taken by the French collaboration police and the nazi regime. In honor of both the book and the little girl, the City of Paris dedicated a street to her in 2015.

Considered as Patrick Modiano's masterpiece, the story recalls the author's obsession with the darkest period of contemporary French history, made up of forgetfulness and unspoken words. The reader also discovers, behind this biographical investigation, the author himself and his existential interrogations.

We read this book in the fall of 2021.