In the Café of Lost Youth

NYRB Classics Original
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

In the Café of Lost Youth is vintage Patrick Modiano, an absorbing evocation of a particular Paris of the 1950s, shadowy and shady, a secret world of writers, criminals, drinkers, and drifters. The novel, inspired in part by the circle (depicted in the photographs of Ed van der Elsken) of the notorious and charismatic Guy Debord, centers on the enigmatic, waiflike figure of Louki, who catches everyone's attention even as she eludes possession or comprehension. Through the eyes of four very different narrators, including Louki herself, we contemplate her character and her fate, while Modiano explores the themes of identity, memory, time, and forgetting that are at the heart of his spellbinding and deeply moving art.

Author: Patrick Modiano
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 03/08/2016
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 7.90h x 4.90w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781590179536


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/01/2016 pg. 92
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2016
Shelf Awareness 03/22/2016

About the Author
Patrick Modiano was born in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris near the end of the Nazi occupation of France. He studied at the Lycée Henri-IV and the Sorbonne. As a teenager he took geometry lessons with the writer Raymond Queneau, who would play a key role in his development. He has written more than thirty works of fiction, including novels, children's books, and the screenplay for Louis Malle's film Lacombe, Lucien. In 2014, Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Chris Clarke was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada, and lives and works in and around New York City. His published translations include work by Oulipo members Raymond Queneau and Olivier Salon. He currently teaches French and is translating a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan, which will be published in 2016.