Thierry Laurent has described the writing of contemporary French novelist Patrick Modiano as "autofiction," a quest for the self through the staging of one's life in invented scenes. Yet, although Modiano's heroes are often also called Patrick and resemble him in several ways, the author constructs for himself a different fictitious existence in each novel. "Autofiction" is a particularly ambiguous genre because author, hero, narrator, and reader are inextricably intertwined. His work frequently explores the influence of the Holocaust and its effects on survivors.

Modiano's "autofiction" follows two different but complementary tracks: reconstruction and imagination. All his novels share the same basic principle of a quest. In them, a narrator with an uncertain identity seeks to reconstruct the blurred past by filling the gaps through imagination. Besides trying to resolve the mystery, the narrator uses investigation and invention to relive the past by means of "historical fiction"; as...