From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a writer's notebook unlocks memories of a love formed and lost in 1960s Paris.

In the aftermath of Algeria's war of independence, Paris was a city rife with suspicion and barely suppressed violence. Amid this tension, Jean, a young writer adrift, met and fell for Dannie, an enigmatic woman fleeing a troubled past. A half century later, with his old black notebook as a guide, he retraces this fateful period in his life, recounting how, through Dannie, he became mixed up with a group of unsavory characters connected by a shadowy crime. Soon Jean, too, was a person of interest to the detective pursuing their case--a detective who would prove instrumental in revealing Dannie's darkest secret.

The Black Notebook bears all the hallmarks of this Nobel Prize-winning literary master's unsettling and intensely atmospheric style, rendered in English by acclaimed translator Mark Polizzotti (Suspended Sentences). Once again, Modiano invites us into his unique world, a Paris infused with melancholy, uncertain danger, and the fading echoes of lost love

"A literary...Simenon. An atmospheric, smoky, sepia-toned whodunit, though more for fans of Camus than Chandler."--Kirkus Reviews

"Modiano's folklore is set out from the beginning...and sheer magic follows once more."--Vogue

"The prose--elliptical, muted, eloquent--falls on the reader like an enchantment...No one is currently writing such beautiful tales of loss, melancholy, and remembrance."--Independent