Few European writers today have been more consistently haunted
by modern Jewish history than French novelist Patrick Modiano.
The selection of works by Modiano available in English represent
only a small fraction of his prolific fictional output. All his
books, including “Dora Bruder,” (University of California Press,
1999), the brooding account of his search for a young deportee
he hears about in the late 1980s, are deeply influenced by World
War II. This is natural, as Modiano was born outside Paris in
1945 to a Sephardic Jewish family with roots originally in
Italy, although his ancestors, longtime inhabitants of
Thessaloniki, Greece, included eminent rabbis. Despite that
august lineage, the author’s father, Albert Modiano, survived
the war in Paris dishonorably, as a clandestine black marketer
profiting from business deals with Nazis. As a writer, Patrick
Modiano has spent decades sorting out his feelings about his
heritage, but recently a slew of other French authors have taken
up the job to help him eva