Un pedigree

“I am writing these pages as one draws up a report or a curriculum vitae, for the record, and no doubt in order to be done with a life that was not mine. The events I will recount up to my twenty-first year I experienced in transparency — that technique whereby landscapes scroll past in the background while the actors remain motionless on a studio set. I wanted to convey the impression that many others have felt before me: everything went by in transparency, and I could not yet live my own life” (text published on the back cover).

Before this book appeared, two preliminary versions of this autobiography had been published under the title Éphéméride. Modiano recalls in particular his mother, his father and his brother. After long taking shelter behind fiction and then autofiction, Modiano finally wrote this Pedigree — a highly unusual autobiography that provides a key to all his other books.

A perfect copy of one of the author’s most sought-after titles.