Late at night, long ago, when I was about to turn twenty-one, I was crossing Place des Pyramides on my way to Place de la Concorde when a car appeared suddenly from out of the darkness. At first I thought it had just grazed me, then I felt a sharp pain from my ankle to my knee…

In the opening scene of Paris Nocturne, the nameless narrator is hit by a car near Place des Pyramides. He and the woman driving the car are taken in a police van to the hospital. He’s sure he has met her somewhere. He is given ether, wakes up in a different hospital, and the woman, Jacqueline Beausergent, has vanished. A mysterious figure presents him with an account of the accident and hands him an envelope stuffed with bank notes.

Does Jacqueline Beausergent have the answers to the narrator’s questions about the past, about his father? He will comb the city’s cafes and stations to find her.

Paris Nocturne is like a mystery novel in which we are searching for the crime itself, as Modiano relentlessly explores the elusive nature of memory.