In the Café of Lost Youth (New York Review Books Classics)

Product Information

Young, disaffected students along with the failed and weary are the patrons of the cafe Condé—collectively known as “the lost Youth,” gathering throughout day and night to pass time. Le premier, un élève à L’École des mines, joue le rôle du narrateur témoin, très peu impliqué dans le déroulement des événements, qui lui ont laissé quelque souvenir nostalgique d’une femme mystérieuse, dont il connaît seulement le surnom avec lequel elle a été baptisée un jour dans le café Le Condé qu’il fréquentait dans sa jeunesse.

Modiano fills his pages with the name of these streets that may sound confusing to a stranger in the city, but are filled with history and romance for the true 'boulevardier'. It is only a short book, and perhaps I made the mistake of reading it in several sessions over four days because other commitments meant my reading time was limited, so I feel I missed some of the resonances.The elegant, haunting story of the forgotten people and places of Paris from the reigning Nobel Laureate.

People disappear one day and we notice that we knew nothing abut them, not even their real identity, says Roland but it could be the epitaph of any Modiano novel. Pour Mircea Eliade, c’est la dialectique du sacré par rapport au profane : la répétition infinie des gestes archétypales afin de les maintenir vivants dans la mémoire collective.In particular, Modiano was fascinated by van der Elsken’s photographs of the circle of Guy Debord, whom he renames Guy de Vere. Four men who have known her, most of them as a visitor to the cafe in the Latin quarter that she also frequented for a while, are trying to track her down. Unless you are familiar with the streets and places there, it's hard to picture the setting of this story.

The only purpose of our journey was to go to the heart of the summer, to where time stops and the hands of the clock are set forever at noon. This short novel is elegiac and deceptively simple - it's like a sad, little refrain coming from far away, that you keep humming, and can't remember where or when you heard it first.He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".