The Search Warrant by Patrick Modiano; paperback book review

This slim yet powerful inquiry into the life of a French 15-year-old, who “runs away” from her convent school in 1941, was first published in France in 1997.

Modiano’s crowning as the Nobel Prize-winner for Literature aptly sees its republication. And so it should. For those who have read little of his work, The Search Warrant is an excellent place to start; Modiano’s narrator inserts himself into this fictive investigation as he scours the records, and streets, for this missing Jewish girl. His journey takes him to his father’s past, his own “running away”, and finally, to Auschwitz.