Honeymoon (Verba Mundi)

Jean B., the narrator of Honeymoon, is submerged in the world where night and day, past and present, have no demarcations. Having spent his entire adult life making documentary movies about lost explorers, Jean suddenly decides to abandon his wife and career, and takes what seems to be a journey to nowhere. He spends his solitary days recounting or imagining the lives of Ingrid and Rigaud, a refugee couple he met more than twenty years ago. Littl e by little, their story takes on more reality than Jean's existence, as his excavation of the past slowly becomes an allencompassing obsession. In Honeymoon, Patrick Modiano constructs an existential tale of suspense and longing, and of the past's hold over a shifting, ambiguous present. Barbara Wright's translation remains true to Modiano's simple, melodious prose of a born storyteller. In the words of Le Monde, this novel truly shows "a magician at work." Jacques-Pierre Amette of Le Point called Modiano, "Possibly the best witness of our generation, and the most ruthless." "A beautiful example of Modiano's fluid storytelling."—Booklist