The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano.
A notebook draws a writer back into memories of a relationship in 1960s Paris, against the suspicion and violence following Algeria's war of independence. Patrick Modiano makes a private record the entrance to an unsettled past.
Read it for what survives in fragments. The novel asks how much can be reconstructed from notes and recollections, and what remains beyond even the most persistent effort to remember.
Translated by Mark Polizzotti. MacLehose Press UK edition. Cover illustration by Tina Berning; image courtesy of Hachette Australia.
