All of Patrick Modiano's books are cut from the same cloth. The pretext is always a search. The character tasked with carrying it out – generally a solitary one, the narrator – uses elements from an era, let's say, analog (address books, notebooks, maps, old paper photographs). The action – and the reflection that follows – usually takes place in Paris and its environs. And the time of the story, after the Second World War, a conflict that, more or less, has had some repercussions on the characters. The great theme of his novels is memory. A search for a lost time, perhaps?