A dreamy rÆ’cit, first published in 1996, introduces to American readers one of the most prolific and critically esteemed French novelists of the last 30 years. Modiano's compact story is his aging novelist-narrator's reminiscence of his fixation on a mercurial woman named Jacqueline, who lived by her wits (and the generosity of several smitten males) in London and Paris during the late-1960s Student Revolt. A whiff of Jeanne Moreau's corrupted glamour in Truffaut's Jules and Jim hangs over this affecting story of loss, whose resonance is deepened by its narrator's acknowledgment that all he has ever written, or will ever write, is necessarily colored by this crucial formative experience.